The UTI to End All UTIs

I have fallen prey to that common scourge of pregnancy, the UTI, and it has been a doozy.  Sunday night I went from feeling normal to shaking with chills, unable to stand upright from pain, and peeing a startling amount of blood, all within the space of an hour.  It came on so suddenly that Rob and I were not sure what the heck was going on, but after a while I started having the constant urge to urinate and pain when I did pee, so we at least had the comfort of knowing what was happening-- not that such comfort really mitigated the misery of that night.  We debated the merits of the emergency room or paging my midwife, but as I had my weekly OB appointment first thing Monday morning, I decided to just tough it out for the rest of the night.  Around 3am I was finally able to go 20 minutes between trips to the toilet and slept in little spurts until it was time to rise for the day, get Grace ready for preschool, and haul my wretched butt to the midwife.

I just about cried at the doctor's office with relief at the concern and coddling the nurses and midwife were giving me.  I'm kind of surprised I didn't, actually, given my normal state of wound-up emotions these days AND being in so much pain AND shaking with chills AND operating on next to no sleep.  After the midwife, I went to fill my prescription; it was downright amazing how difficult it felt to navigate the parking garages, elevators, and, well, walking it took to get in and out of the doctor's office and Target.  "I can do this," I steeled myself, facing the trip from my midwife's office on the 3rd floor of her building to my car parked on the 5th floor of the garage across the street.  After a dose of the antibiotics and something to treat the symptoms and some Tylenol PM, I crashed into bed for the rest of the day, so thankful that Rob could come home to take care of Grace and that some scientist somewhere accidentally discovered antibiotics.  Seriously, I have never been so appreciative of antibiotics and now wonder if I have ever truly needed them before this.

Oh, and all this has sent my uterus into crazy contraction overdrive.  I really think that if I hadn't gotten help (you know, like if I lived in a past century or something) this would have put me into for-real labor, with all the inflammation and infection irritating my uterus and the like.  That wouldn't have been bad for the baby since I'm a little past 37 weeks now, but boy, I would have been in terrible shape.  I had 1 contraction while the midwife was actually examining me, 2 on the drive from the midwife to Target, 3 in Target waiting for them to fill my subscription, all getting more intense.  They've calmed down a lot since the drugs have started me on the road to recovery so I don't think we're going to have this baby in the next day or so, but maybe things are gearing up?  I certainly wouldn't mind going into labor once I am back to a more normal level of energy/health.  That makes me sound like a video game character, doesn't it?

My title up there is a little silly, of course, considering that I have never had a UTI in my life before and have nothing to compare it to.  That first night when I was so sick, I was reading one of my pregnancy books, trying to see if this was some weird form of labor or a UTI or just me DYING, and the talk of UTIs seemed to mostly be about the symptom-free "silent" UTI and how important it is to finish your antibiotics even if you never had symptoms, blah blah blah.  My particular problem I would characterize more as a screaming, wailing UTI, an operatic, Wagnerian type of illness.  Fortunately, it is starting to quiet down as I am doing a TON better after just a day on the antibiotics.  I slept like the dead last night and have much less pain, and am left mostly just drained and weak.  Which I see as a GREAT IMPROVEMENT-- nay, a veritable VICTORY FOR MODERN MEDICINE.