3324 Collecting

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Anything that says "healthy" I stay away from.
Giving up butter, for instance, means that in about two years
you will be covered in dandruff.
-- Julia Child --

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It's been a hair over six weeks since I had the stent removed, and it's time to do the 24-hour urine collection. (Why wait six weeks? I have no idea. Perhaps because my bladder was so torn up the urologist wanted to give it time to heal? That still doesn't explain six weeks. Maybe that was the longest he figured he could put off having to see me again.)

I picked up the collection bottles at the lab earlier in the week. Yeah, bottleS. Turns out the doctor wants a bunch of things (chemicals in the urine) tested for, some of which require acid in the urine in the bottle, and others which require pure urine, so I have to do TWO 24-hour collections. So I needed two days that I wasn't going to be going out much.

I had intended to head upriver on Wednesday evening and return yesterday, but I blew it. I got involved in something Wednesday, and time had gotten away from me and it was late and I was very tired. So I decided to leave very early Thursday morning. I've been waking automatically at 6:30 lately, so I figured I could be on the road by 7.

Wednesday night I had great difficulty sleeping. Thousands of thoughts. Tossing and turning. I even got up and came downstairs for a few minutes at 2 am. By 5 am I was still not sleeping. Then I fell asleep and didn't wake until 9:30. That would put me at the old house at the hottest time of the afternoon, I'd have lost control of the heat in the house, wouldn't be able to get it cooled down, and then I'd just have to leave again the next morning. So I didn't go. I'll go Monday.

So I've been collecting urine yesterday and today.

When the woman at the lab gave me the containers, I said, "3000 ml? I'll need an additional container for each day, these aren't large enough."

I am so sick and tired of medical folks patting me on the head and assuring me I don't know what I'm talking about.

"Oh, no, these will be plenty large enough. If you fill it this far (pointing about two inches from the top) you'll be doing really good." I told her I regularly drink a minimum of three liters a day, not including whatever fluid is in my food. She said, "Oh, not everything that goes in comes out. This will be ok."

I didn't argue further.

So yesterday, when the container was more than half full by 2 pm, I curtailed my usual intake for the rest of the day, because I knew the next morning's piddle would be especially important because that's where all the vitamins and minerals I take would show up, and that would be about 12-16 ounces, so I'd have to leave at least that much room. Which royally pissed me off, because I figure if we want to find out what's causing the stones, it's important to eat and drink as close to my usual as possible.

I took that container to the lab this morning, and it was full to within a half inch of the top.

It's NOT thirst that makes me drink so much. It's habit. I don't usually carry bottles of water with me, for example. I can be out running around all day with nothing to drink, and I'll feel no thirst. One odd thing I've noticed is that when I don't get the usual three quarts of water a day, my stomach sticks out. It's like my body pulls a reserve of fluid into the fat pad on my tummy. Camel mode. The better regularly hydrated I am, the flatter the tummy. (And the better my face looks. Wrinkles and grooves get filled in.)

"They" say that when you are adequately hydrated, your urine should be very pale, almost clear.

I never see clear, even at 3+ quarts a day. It's rarely even pale. It's usually bright yellow crayon yellow. When I've gone a day with little to drink, it's a bright intense flashing neon yellow. (When it gets dark yellow, that's infection.)

My liver's fine, by the way. And the whites of my eyes are white.

Maybe it's the vitamins and minerals? Excess getting piddled away? I don't think so, because a.) although I'm taking a large variety, it's not large quantities, nowhere near megadoses on any of them, they're just to "fill in" the holes, so to speak, and b.) I have often skipped the supplements when traveling or "just because", and there's no difference.

I'm hoping this test might answer that question.
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