A really not fun life lesson

Posted Dec 17, 2023

I don’t think I’ve written a more typical update-type post lately, so before we dig right into it: hi! How are you? Staying hydrated? Excited for the holidays? Enduring the horrors of existing? I hope so 🩷

Now, although there has been a lot going on at work and in my personal life, the only topic I wanna talk about right now is related to physical health. I don’t consider this story TMI¹, nor do I get into graphic detail, but if you’re squeamish this might not be the update post for you, so you can take this lil TL;DR and be on your way:

When you can feel that something is going wrong in your body, trust yourself and your instincts, and take that information to a doctor!²

All right, you weirdos who stuck around, here’s the long version:

Sometime during the early part of this past week, I believe (not 100% confirmed, mostly deduction after the fact plus some good ol’ fashioned google) I contracted a urinary tract infection (UTI). These are relatively common for women, and not only do I know plenty of people who have had them, I’ve had one or two in the past as well. Typically, and always in the few experiences I’d had with it, the symptoms are mild, and resolve on their own within a few days.

This time around, symptoms were particularly weak, to the point I wasn’t really sure anything was going on at all. On Wednesday, I noticed that I had strong pains in my lower stomach. This felt pretty similar to the way I feel when I eat too much dairy (shoutout to all my lactose intolerant homies), so aside from being mildly confused about what I might have eaten that would cause it, I didn’t find it a cause for undue concern. The pain increased throughout the day, but I wanted to believe it was just something I ate, and I tried to ignore it. At that time I did not see a connection between these two issues.

Then Thursday came. My stomach was still in pain when I woke up, but everything else seemed fine, so I began to work from home. During lunchtime, as I often do, I ate quickly so that I could use the rest of that time to nap. No sooner did my head touch the pillow than the strongest feeling of being absolutely devoid of warmth come over me. My fingers went numb within minutes, and I was shivering uncontrollably, teeth chattering hard enough to give me a headache. I managed to shoot off a text to Connor, who got me more blankets, stayed next to me, and called a doctor for advice while I fought tooth and nail not to let this distressing, sudden sensation send me into a full panic attack. I had never had a fever come on so quickly and violently. I have very little sense of how much time I spent in that terrifying state, but it felt like an eternity.

Once my shivers finally subsided and I regained a bit of my cognitive faculties, I started piecing the evidence together. Intuition pointed toward, and medical sites seemed to confirm, that what had happened was that I did, in fact, have a UTI, and that it had managed to make its way to my kidney(s).

The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent weaving in and out of lucidity, needing Connor to help me drink from a cup of water, freezing and burning simultaneously. Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t manage to get much sleep, and in the wee hours of the morning I started learning a lot more about kidney infections. Including the fact that if left untreated, they can cause serious, permanent damage, or even death. I’m usually extremely reluctant to see a doctor for anything acute, because I’m always afraid for some reason that they will invalidate my experience, or that nothing is actually wrong with me and I will have wasted their time. In this case, though, I was willing to swallow that anxiety and get to a doctor.

If I’d been in the US, I would have gone to Urgent Care - for anyone unfamiliar, it’s basically where you go for an unexpected visit that has some urgency³ but doesn’t appear to need immediate attention or be life-threatening. I’d never seen such a thing in Germany, though, so I started searching for information on what the Germans would do in this scenario. For once, Reddit came through with useful information; if you have a general practitioner⁴ that you’ve seen before, you can go to their practice without an appointment during a special hour of the day that they reserve for exactly this purpose. Of course, with the limited amount of time, you’re not guaranteed to be seen, but in my case I went early enough that I managed to get some time with the doctor.

The actual appointment was not all that interesting, so I won’t give you the play-by-play, but the bullet points are:

• I was so visibly suffering in the waiting room that another patient, who had arrived before me, offered to let me see the doctor first (which was very sweet!)
• Very few activities feel less dignified than peeing into a cup
• My hypothesis was correct, I had indeed developed a kidney infection

I walked out of the doctor’s office with a prescription for a 10 day course of antibiotics, which unfortunately would only fight the infection and not touch the symptoms, so I was on my own in treating those. I was also written off work for the next full week, with the very encouraging prediction from my doctor that I would probably continue feeling symptoms that entire time. Cool.

Since getting back from that appointment (and up the 109 stairs to our flat), I haven’t left home. I’ve never been so physically miserable in my life. Painkiller/fever reducer combos can only do so much, and my fever seems to spike on a cycle every few hours. I know where my kidneys are now because they hurt. My fever has gotten as high as 104F/40C. I’ve been weak and helpless, unable to do much more than drink water (often with need of assistance) and either sleep or try to distract myself with screens⁵.

I’m writing this on Sunday night, feeling the most clearheaded I’ve felt in days, but still in a lot of pain. I wrote this whole update for a singular purpose, and that is to tell anyone who happens to stumble upon my little corner of the internet that if you can feel that there’s something iffy or wrong going on in your body, trust yourself! Don’t invalidate your own experience, don’t roll over to any voice in your head that warns you not to seek help for {insert unlikely & unhelpful reason}, and do not just ignore your body’s signals and hope things will resolve themselves!

Ok, now I’ll get off my soapbox—slowly, because everything f***ing hurts.