Maybe I Have Bladder Cancer

Before I get started with today's post, I'd like to give a public congrats to my friends Meaghan and Chris. Last week they saw their son come into the world healthy and supposedly with all of its digits and limbs. I'm not sure if Chris saw his wife sliced, stretched, poked, and prodded like I did with my wife's C-section, but I'm not sure seeing it happen the old fashioned way would be any less traumatic (for any of the parties involved). I'm sure by now, almost a week later, they've started to realize where some of my bitter humor as a father comes from. I hope you two can get a couple of hours of sleep strung together every once and a while. I promise that babies start sleeping through the night eventually. It just doesn't seem that way to start with.

And Meaghan, I'm really sorry that your congrats comes packaged with what follows.

I usually keep myself well hydrated. I always take a reusable liter bottle full of water to work with me every day and it usually comes home empty. I also leave home with either a Sierra Mist Free (my main beverage vice) or a glass of juice to drink on the way to work. Between 8 and 10 a.m. some of that liter of water gets turned into a couple of cups of hot tea. The rest gets sipped throughout the day. When I get home it's usually more water with supper. My system isn't hurting for H₂O. Given the amount of fluid that passes down my gullet each day, it's not surprising that I tend to pee a good bit. At work, I've got it down to a schedule. I'm usually very ready to go by 10 a.m., which I do right before my first class of the day, and then I go again at the beginning of lunch around 12:30 p.m., which I do while my lunch is heating in the microwave. Sometimes I'll have to make a pit stop on the out to the car in the afternoons, but I can usually manage it until I get home.

This all makes me sound like a very regimented person, but I'm not. I just can't leave my class when students are in the room. I'm forced to stick to a schedule, which is one of the smaller things I hate about my job.

Today didn't stick to the schedule. I had a meeting for proctors of a standardized test we'll be giving over the next seven days and by the end of the meeting, I was squirming a little bit. I left as soon as it was appropriate and made water. This was after only my first cup of tea. I knew things were going to be odd. By the middle of second period I my kidneys were aching again I had to go so bad. That really isn't normal. I'd had orange juice with breakfast, my normal two cups of tea and nothing else. This wasn't lunch. I shouldn't be going again. I knew I had to wait for thirty minutes after the start of third block for lunch so I went again between 2nd and 3rd blocks. I didn't have to go during lunch, but I did have to make another run for it between 3rd and 4th blocks. And these weren't little false alarm trickles. These were full 16 ouncers. I had to pee again as soon as I got home two hours later. That's twice as many trips as normal on the same amount of fluid.

I only have two explanations for this. The first one is that someone spiked my OJ and water with Golden Grain. I typically have to make one trip to the loo for every alcoholic beverage consumed. Still, I think if my beverages had been spiked enough to make a difference, I would have noticed. My only other explanation, and the more likely one, I guess, is that I have a tumor pressing on some gland that controls my rate of fluid waste production.

If I'm dead by New Year's, don't say I didn't warn you. My painful, damp death will be on your hands. Quite literally.