Aha! So THAT’S What’s Wrong With Me.

I have always held that a hypochondriac is just someone who isn’t diagnosed yet. There is a bell in our heads that rings long before any illness can show up on a test, but still we get tested and re-tested since we KNOW something is wrong.

Of course, right before both undiagnosed MS flare-ups I felt fabulous beforehand. Not sick, not ever been sick, never could be sick. During the flare-up, however, I read every page of the Medical Encyclopedia. Well, except for the MS page.

On to the present. As you know, I’ve been overly concerned about this choking business. I’ve been eating slower, smaller bites, drinking with a straw, and no body fluid eruptions as of late. And then there was the blood clot. I can see you (yes, you, allll of you) developing a theory that all I want is medical attention. The trial is over, and now that I don’t see a doctor every few months I feel neglected. (I really do feel neglected now that I have had to part with my therapeutic vaginal masseuse.)

So, my yearly physical (planned, yearly, not pathetic) revealed that I have a specific type of white blood cell in my urine.

“OO! OO!” you cry, raising your hand. “Bladder infection! Bladder infection!”

At the time, I had no symptoms of a bladder infection, and had done nothing worthy of a bladder infection. Still, I dutifully peed, and they found no infection. They figured they’d pass it on to my neurologist because he’s the one giving me the MS drug that affects that particular type of white blood cell.

I thought I could ask that doctor what was up at my appointment on 11/1. On my way out I checked the card and saw that I won’t see him until 1/11 next year. Numbers! Damn them! Whatever. My urine is clean and smells like mountain wildflowers. No worries.

However, the wonderful GP website alerts me when I have medical test results. Someone did another test, and while the first test showed “trace” bacteria, the same test two days later showed …

Huge colonies OF Bacteria!
(That is how I read “*10,000 – 50,000 colonies/ml”)

And they are FAT Bacteria! FAT but Happy!
(Or, as they said, “*Multiple Gram Positive Organisms”)

Huge happy colonies of fat INTERSPECIES bacteria! Or ….
(“*Greater than two species present, suggestive of contamination”)

“Screw you!” I thought, “I’m not contaminated. Contaminated with what? Where would I get some other species of bacteria in me? What, like dog bacteria? Oh… wait… No. No I’m sure that’s not what they meant.”

And before you assume I wiped the pee off the floor and squeezed in into the cup like that one time, no, I followed all the rules perfectly. I didn’t contaminate my urine. Maybe some of my bacteria mutated into a new species of super-happy super-fat bacteria! Ones that don’t cause any symptoms of bladder infections!

I figure someone at the lab sneezed into it.