blood clot

Let's see if I can get through this without squirming too much…

Yesterday morning… I wake up at 5:00AM, per usual. I pop my prescription levothyroxine pill, I take a piss, and I weigh myself. Those are the first things I do every morning. The pill is chalky, my piss burns a bit, and I weigh the same as the day before although my bodyfat jumped a whole percentage point, which is illogical and irritating. Half asleep, I move like a preprogrammed automaton through the rest of my morning routine.

I get to work. I drink two cups of coffee. I hit urinal #3 to take a piss. As I'm pissing I notice that somebody has hacked up a spot of blood and spit it into urinal #3. Gross. As I flush I try to remember whether or not those mucus-like blood spots were in the urinal before I stepped up to the plate. I wash my hands and leave.

Over the next couple hours I drink a several mugs of deliciously steamy green tea. Eventually, I must take another piss to evacuate the green tea goodness. This time I step up to urinal #1, better lighting than #3. With a bit of trepidation, I unsheathe Mr. Happy and let loose. The tip of my penis burns ever so slightly. Under normal circumstance I wouldn't have noticed and if I had noticed I wouldn't have worried. Slightly burning urine happens some times when I'm dehydrated, or I'm sick, or my body chemistry is off kilter, or I'm still sweaty from a decent round of sex. But given the recent blood blob in urinal #3, I'm a bit perturbed. As I watch the urine swirl in the shallow urinal pool, several flecks of red seemingly-spontaneously manifest themselves in the clockwise spin. I freak out a bit, but I hold on to the hope that these red spots were lying motionless at the bottom of the urinal and that I stirred them up while pissing. I flush, wash my hands, and leave.

Eventually, after a 24-oz protein shake spiced with flaxseed oil, I feel the urge to return to urinal #1. Before I wiz I visually inspect the urinal for spots of dirt and sunken flecks of solid matter. None. I bite my bottom lip and pee. It burns a bit. I bank the urine stream off the sidewall to eliminate bubbling and mitigate turbidity. This is the same diffusion technique I use when I tap a keg and discharge the beer along the side of my cup to reduce head. I watch intently… nothing… nothing… ah, fuck! Little red spots of bloody tissue and a weird thread of blood begin dancing in the micro-maelstrom of the urinal. The undeniable proof that I'm expelling bloody junk from my urethra makes me swoon. I finish pissing, but I don't flush. With my heart racing, I simply stand there frozen with fear, staring into the pisser. Petrified with dick in hand, I watch as the swirling urine slows and the flecks of blood settle to the bottom. The urine water placates and becomes a still pool of yellow-tinted calmness. I shudder, flush, wash, and leave.

As soon as I get to my cubicle I google "blood clot in urine". I begin clicking on links and reading reports on various causes of blood in male urine. The research process takes the rest of the afternoon, because I can barely read three consecutive sentences without breaking into a sweat and getting lightheaded. Yeah, I'm that big of a pussy. However, in my defense, pissing out bizarre chunks of blood is one of the scariest fucking maladies I can think of… that and shitting blood and bleeding from the eye sockets.

Anyway, per my google-assisted self-diagnostic I have a ruptured blood vessel somewhere around my kidneys and urethra. Several links stated that this kind of injury could be caused by impact trauma to the kidney area and/or vigorous sex. It all makes sense now. The day before (i.e., Monday) both of those things happened. I took some hard falls in Karate class. For the majority of those falls I landed smack on the small of my back. After that (close your eyes if you don't want to know about my sex life) I partook of "vigorous" sex as suggested by the bite marks and hickeys marring my body. (I've had to wear a collared shirts too work and I hate collared shirts.)

As yesterday progressed, the burning stopped and the funky penile blood junk subsided. Oddly, I never pissed blood; my urine was always fairly clear with a slight yellow tint. I was pissing blood particulates and coagulated tissue.

I was hoping that today I'd be all healed up. I'm not. I've pissed thrice and it's all the same as yesterday. I should probably call my doc right away, but I'm a guy and therefore I'm stupid, stubborn, and indestructible. If it is a burst blood vessel then there's not much anybody can do about it; it will heal on its own. I'm going to give my body the benefit of the doubt and wait until Friday, unless things get worse. If, come Friday, I'm pissing pieces of blood I'm off to the doctor.

On the plus side, I now feel a kindred empathy --not mere sympathy but empathy-- with menstruating women. This is a milestone I could never achieve without pissing bloody junk. Now is the perfect time for me to indulge in some uncharacteristic mood swings.
...and so it was written, shenry at 9/01/2004 08:47:00 AM.
...and so it was appended with .