In Technicolor

Warning: This post is about pee...squeamish beware.



I've been battling a pesky UTI (urinary tract infection) for about a week and a half. One of the pissers (pun intended) about being a woman is the proneness to infections since our parts are tucked nice and neatly inside. Anyway, I had been taking a course of antibiotics to clear that and a mild case of strep throat. Metaphorically speaking, I'm all about killing two birds with one stone. I finished the antibiotics this past weekend and felt great. Bathroom visits were lowered significantly, toilet paper was lasting a bit longer, and car rides weren't torture.

However, yesterday I noticed the symptoms were creeping back. I ran out to the pharmacy to get some over the counter Uristat. It's supposed to help relieve the symptoms and sometimes can even clear it up if you catch it early enough. I popped the two maroon pills and waited. Hours later, I felt way better and the uncomfortable symptoms had vanished.

After dinner, I realized that I hadn't gone to the bathroom since ingesting the Uristat. I went. After finishing up, I almost screeched in horror. My pee was bright orange. It looked like I had expelled an entire bottle of Gatorade into the toilet. Frantically, I ran to get the package of Uristat. I read the entire box. There at the bottom was the warning: May cause a harmless, orange-red coloring of the urine and other body fluids. Staining of contact lenses and clothing that comes in contact with body fluids may occur. I breathed a sigh of relief. I was not hemorrhaging, nor dying of kidney disease. I was simply peeing in technicolor from an analgesic called phenazopyridine. Awesome!

Although, it does bother me that this stuff is so potent that it can discolor your contact lenses. I wonder if I can spit orange.