Think I caught this for three reasons.

1. Ailment for having done nothing wrong.
2. Experience valid hot flashes.
3. Lay low in Dallas.
4. B-Day present for mom.

As soon as we headed off to a doc in the box, after a call to my primary, who is in San Antonio, wherein the answer was, in essence, “Go to a doc-in-the-box.” No sooner do I head off to an urgent care than the mom medical phone tree lights up. “I let you sister know, I called the family friends, and I can get you in next week to a world-famous urologist.” The list goes on. Of the three, my mom, my sister, and me? I’m the only one who can be legally addressed as “Doctor,” owing to a dated piece of paper with an honorary “Doctor of Metaphysics”¹ and my name. Legally sound; morally questionable. I don’t use it, but I have one, just in case. Used to get called Dr., as in “Dr. fix me!” More skill than I have.

So in the family, the other two, in clear violation of current HIPAA practices, have lit up phone lines from coast-to-coast discussing my urinary tract. Glad to know I’m that interesting.

Made me think, of the three, my sister does have a university degree in biology, but as I’ve worked alongside her, the artist sentiment has long supplanted fact-based, plodding scientific discovery.

To be fair, in the first fever dream, I was planning my obituary, not trusting my family to write a decent one. Not that this is an uncommon thought process, not this far into the pandemic madness.

In a rare moment of clarity, as the fever subsided, but before I got around to a doctor, I took a quick physical inventory, as a metaphysical assessment of my malady. Spooky urine, but no kidney or liver pain. Vague muscle aches, perhaps some organ was gradually shutting down.

While I didn’t think of it as constipation, there was lack of normally fissile material percolating down my GI. Maybe the last colonoscopy left a piece of hardware in me?

Pisser

What this speaks to a certain place and set of conditions, when the doc-in-the-box nurse took me to the sample bathroom, I asked if she needed to watch. That’s in reference to a urine analysis for illegal drugs, and the sample needs to be observed². That was humor. Failed. Thought I was freak or an alternative sexuality person. Nope. Just failed at the humor, and with matters in hand, might’ve been gallows humor³.

Which brings to mind another humorous situation, didn’t happen this time, but a doctor comes in, sees the fluid in a beaker and takes a sip. Of course via sleight of hand, or just simple misdirection, the actual sample is replaced with lemonade or better yet, Mountain Dew. The carbonation is part of the sight gag, swirl it around, “Good effervescence, note the piquant bouquet, good nose on this one…”

In a final urine analysis, this isn’t an infection that is contagious⁴, except in very limited examples, and there’s none of that at this moment. My mother wanted to blame the politics, the ball game⁵, my friends and cohorts, any thing but circumstances. Never mind a slightly ill child is like a secret birthday wish come true, so my mother can hover and fret. Like a wish come true?

As ordained by the gods.

1. See the bio, astrofish.net/bio. ↩
2. It’s a closed loop. ↩
3. Always go for low hanging fruit? ↩
4. Close to a week’s worth of broad spectrum antibiotics, all good. ↩
5. World Series Game Three. ↩