Post # 49.5: Adventures in Urgent Care

SUNSHINE AND PUPPIES, SUNSHINE AND PUPPIES!!!!

Obviously, today wasn't all sunshine and puppies.
 
While I've been dicking around with taking this new medication, and now waiting for it to kick in, I guess one could say I've been having a month long "flare". I don't know if that's the correct term, but when one has (many!) colon explosions everyday for a month, I guess it applies. I seem to recall my doctor saying there is only active and inactive disease, so whether this is a flare or "active disease" (which sounds so much less alarming), my digestive business is not in a good place.
 
Naturally, having this much activity in my AAC is not beneficial to the rest of my body, nor is a varied diet of white bread and Gatorade. I've felt rundown, exhausted, and wonky all month. I just feel sick. Today, I felt especially not right and was a little weepy, which in general means I'm dehydrated. Coupled with some other symptoms, I decided to go to Urgent Care to get some fluids (ha). I've done this before (3 times!) and I always feel better afterwards, so I figured it was a sound plan, and frankly after a month of feeling like someone sucked all of the energy out of my body with a giant straw I wanted some relief.
 
Urgent Care may sound all dramatic, but it's actually the easiest and most cost effective way I've found to deal with this particular problem. The wait is shorter, you get immediate lab results, and they hook you up to a bag of saline goodness in no time. I could go into a long digression about how specialists aren't equipped to deal with the day/day medical ramifications of this disease, but that's another story. To Urgent Care then, where there is less red tape and more action! Huzzah!
 
After a short wait in the waiting room (with possible Lyme disease guy, lady with infected toe that was thankfully in a shoe, and broken finger kid), I was back into a room. Let me say that I had been to this particular place three times, with the same symptoms, and always had the same results: delicious, delicious hydration. This doctor (PA? whatever) was more "thorough" and wanted to see my labs before he gave me the good stuff. He poked me, felt my tender AAC (ouch), and listened to it with a stethoscope (weird). Blood was taken, and I donated some florescent yellow pee to the cause.
 
Side note: I love how they call peeing in a cup "clean catch".....makes me think of grizzlies catching salmon in their mouths in a raging stream on the cover of National Geographic. Anyway.
 
 The good news? My labs were all fine (except for the ones they had to send out). Secretly, I was worried that this new med (and the month of flaring) had jacked up my system, so I was relieved. My pee was fine. I was not sufficiently dehydrated to warrant hydration (THWARTED).

So I'm back to where I started-stomach pain, super AAC, and feeling like roadkill. I still think some fluids would have helped me feel better, although he did send me home with some sort of prescription for the cramping/pain. boo.