Muddy has had problems and has not been for a ride this weekend. Don't dismiss the power of a urinary tract infection! I've broken ribs, a finger, my nose four times, torn a ligament, and ripped a cartilage in my knee. None of that - NONE - compared to the pain of this little infection.
Male readers, you will no doubt have hit on this page because you too are having issues downstairs. Need to urinate a lot but nothing comes out? When you do your bladder is on fire? So you go on the web to find out, and the first 100 answers are massively over-hyped. You've got prostate cancer my friend, get a Doctor's finger up your ass now! Write your will and prepare to die*.
Well I'm certainly not going to suggest you avoid getting a Doctor to check your waterworks out. What I am going to suggest is that most of these nay-sayers seem to have an agenda. Most are private health clinics, some sell plant based medicines. Muddy here spent a few days worried, as you do. I have cancer!
You may, but the chances are that you have not. If all of a sudden your bladder is on fire, or as in my case, right kidney as well, then get your urine checked. I left my check until I was in absolute agony, all doubled up with pain. By that stage you couldn't care less if your anal probe is televised live to the world; you want that pain to stop, now.
Muddy wasn't probed. Muddy instead dribbled, painfully, some urine into a little pot. The test stated urinary tract infection. The solution is some little tablets. I expected horse tranquilizer sized things, but instead you get a tablet not much bigger than a sweetener. Which is disappointing.
Don't fret Dear Reader. If you experience a little pain when urinating, or you need to go a lot all of a sudden but nothing comes out, don't wait. Go see a nurse or Doctor and get your urine checked. Really, don't wait. The pain is very bad indeed.
The Doctor, by the way, was useless. Turn up, in pain, expect to see a doctor? In the UK? No chance. I saw a nurse instead. She took a sample of urine, and sent me off with some tablets. Didn't hear from them at all, so popped back a week later to enquire.
"Call at 2pm. There's a special person for that."
This at 1:30, receptionist in front of the PC doing naff all. Didn't even ask who I was, and was reluctant to give the number out. She had to write it down on paper in the end.
Called later, only to be told everything was fine, and they hung up on me.
Now I started to get angry. This was my third negative, offhand interaction with my Doctor. Well actually that is wrong; I'd never got through the administration to even see this person. Do they exist? At no point did anybody ask if I was OK. You'd think at the second or third interactions somebody would ask why I was coming back, put something on file, but no, nothing. I'd have called back, but by then I was really fuming and would have just been incoherent.
It's a crap system for patients this one we have now. You rarely get to see a Doctor; I paid £200 to see one privately last time as mine was so useless. She, a Doctor, seemed to have a phobia about physical contact. They seem to have this massive administration surrounding them so as to prevent you actually seeing them. It's bizarre and fundamentally wrong. What was the problem with the old system, where you turned up and sat for hours in a waiting room. That weeded out the malingerers. Who'd wait for hours if they were OK?
Now those that can play the system get appointments when they want, and then hog the slots. My wife works in the system, and is forever moaning about non-attendees for appointments. At my surgery they had a sign stating that in the past month, something like 154 people hadn't turned up.
The appointment system may work for the Doctor, but to me it's a dysfunctional one. How is it prudent to allocate all the appointment slots 5 minutes after the surgery opens? No wonder many people give up and got to the hospital, which is the wrong place for so many.
My Doctor may be lovely. They may well have cured me. As it is I've not met the Doctor, think the system dire, and am still ill. How toss is that?
*Actually I read past the first 100 Google answers. I got beyond the instant death scenarios and on to long term solutions. Naturally these were all Muddy barking up the wrong tree. However the most painful thing, the most disappointing, were those suggestions to change my lifestyle. Benign prostate would mean drinking more water, which is bad enough, yet the worst was avoiding all coffee and alcohol. Forever.
Male readers, you will no doubt have hit on this page because you too are having issues downstairs. Need to urinate a lot but nothing comes out? When you do your bladder is on fire? So you go on the web to find out, and the first 100 answers are massively over-hyped. You've got prostate cancer my friend, get a Doctor's finger up your ass now! Write your will and prepare to die*.
Well I'm certainly not going to suggest you avoid getting a Doctor to check your waterworks out. What I am going to suggest is that most of these nay-sayers seem to have an agenda. Most are private health clinics, some sell plant based medicines. Muddy here spent a few days worried, as you do. I have cancer!
You may, but the chances are that you have not. If all of a sudden your bladder is on fire, or as in my case, right kidney as well, then get your urine checked. I left my check until I was in absolute agony, all doubled up with pain. By that stage you couldn't care less if your anal probe is televised live to the world; you want that pain to stop, now.
Muddy wasn't probed. Muddy instead dribbled, painfully, some urine into a little pot. The test stated urinary tract infection. The solution is some little tablets. I expected horse tranquilizer sized things, but instead you get a tablet not much bigger than a sweetener. Which is disappointing.
Don't fret Dear Reader. If you experience a little pain when urinating, or you need to go a lot all of a sudden but nothing comes out, don't wait. Go see a nurse or Doctor and get your urine checked. Really, don't wait. The pain is very bad indeed.
The Doctor, by the way, was useless. Turn up, in pain, expect to see a doctor? In the UK? No chance. I saw a nurse instead. She took a sample of urine, and sent me off with some tablets. Didn't hear from them at all, so popped back a week later to enquire.
"Call at 2pm. There's a special person for that."
This at 1:30, receptionist in front of the PC doing naff all. Didn't even ask who I was, and was reluctant to give the number out. She had to write it down on paper in the end.
Called later, only to be told everything was fine, and they hung up on me.
Now I started to get angry. This was my third negative, offhand interaction with my Doctor. Well actually that is wrong; I'd never got through the administration to even see this person. Do they exist? At no point did anybody ask if I was OK. You'd think at the second or third interactions somebody would ask why I was coming back, put something on file, but no, nothing. I'd have called back, but by then I was really fuming and would have just been incoherent.
It's a crap system for patients this one we have now. You rarely get to see a Doctor; I paid £200 to see one privately last time as mine was so useless. She, a Doctor, seemed to have a phobia about physical contact. They seem to have this massive administration surrounding them so as to prevent you actually seeing them. It's bizarre and fundamentally wrong. What was the problem with the old system, where you turned up and sat for hours in a waiting room. That weeded out the malingerers. Who'd wait for hours if they were OK?
Now those that can play the system get appointments when they want, and then hog the slots. My wife works in the system, and is forever moaning about non-attendees for appointments. At my surgery they had a sign stating that in the past month, something like 154 people hadn't turned up.
The appointment system may work for the Doctor, but to me it's a dysfunctional one. How is it prudent to allocate all the appointment slots 5 minutes after the surgery opens? No wonder many people give up and got to the hospital, which is the wrong place for so many.
My Doctor may be lovely. They may well have cured me. As it is I've not met the Doctor, think the system dire, and am still ill. How toss is that?
*Actually I read past the first 100 Google answers. I got beyond the instant death scenarios and on to long term solutions. Naturally these were all Muddy barking up the wrong tree. However the most painful thing, the most disappointing, were those suggestions to change my lifestyle. Benign prostate would mean drinking more water, which is bad enough, yet the worst was avoiding all coffee and alcohol. Forever.
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