I’m relatively new to blogging and, for some reason, I feel compelled to be completely honest with all my readers. The line of honesty and sharing here is sometimes blurred by fear or…well, probably just fear. It’s tough to know how much to share. It’s hard to write some posts without being 100% honest and, if I can’t be honest and open here, then what’s the point?

I’ve thought a lot about sharing what’s been going on with me over the past three weeks and, I decided to write about it because #1 it may help someone else in the same situation and #2 I don’t want to lie to you and tell you that the two days missing from my training log last week were because I was “sick.”

About three weeks ago, after an amazing 14 mile treadmill run, (do I have to note the dripping sarcasm?) I went to the bathroom and basically peed all blood. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. I held it together long enough to get out of the gym and dial my friend who had been running with me. She was totally calm and insisted I not Google anything, that she would do a little research and get back to me.

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As I waited for her call, I met my husband and sons at the boy’s basketball practice and didn’t mention a thing. That’s how I roll.

My friend called me back and said it’s actually kind of common with runners after “strenuous” exercise. Interesting. The only problem was that 14 miles on the treadmill was not very strenuous as far as my workouts were going, and I’ve run 10x more then that over the course of 15 years, and never had this issue.

So I Googled it. Basically it was either “hemateria” (bleeding) from exercise, kidney stones or bladder cancer. There wasn’t much in between. I feared going to the bathroom pretty much every time after, but each subsequent time, everything was good. It only happened that once.

So here are the events that followed, bulleted for your convenience:

  • I saw my gynecologist three days later and there was still microscopic blood in my urine
  • He sent me to a urologist. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a urologist. It’s actually for the walking dead since it was me and six 80 year-old men, all peeing in cups. They are hardly discreet there. #GottaLoveIt
  • The urologist didn’t like what he saw or my “family history” (my mother dying at 43 from ovarian cancer) so he scheduled an ultrasound
  • The ultrasound showed nothing (they thought it may have been a small stone that passed) but the urologist insisted on a cystoscopy. You don’t even want to know what that is. In a word? Painful.
  • Through the cystoscopy the urologist saw “something” on the wall of my bladder. He told me it didn’t look like cancer but they would have to preform surgery to biopsy and remove it. Awesome.

And this all happened before I went to Las Vegas.

If anyone should see a urologist, it's this guy. You know, just the statue of David in Caesar's Palace.

If anyone should see a urologist, it’s this guy. You know, just the statue of David in Caesar’s Palace.

I’m not sure how I held it all together, and if I’m being honest, I didn’t some a lot of the time. I tried desperately to think positively and to lean on the few people who knew what was going on. We all agreed that if the doctor thought it was “bad” he would have told me to stay home from Vegas and would have performed the surgery as soon as possible. I called him twice just to make sure.

This past Monday I checked into the hospital at zero dark thirty, was given an IV, escorted to the operating room and then it was lights out.

Before the procedure my aunt took this picture as proof I was "ok." I mean, I'm probably tweeting something at this moment...

Before the procedure my aunt took this picture as proof I was “ok.” If I’m holding my phone then everything is clearly ok.

When I woke-up the doctor was in my face saying “it’s gone, there was nothing there!” Um, say what now? What’s gone? My bladder? I was so confused. When the fog of anstehsia lifted, it was explained to me that whatever the doctor saw on my bladder two weeks ago, was now gone.

Gone.

His best guess is that it was severe inflammation and it healed itself.

If you look up hemateria and exercise, it will tell you that it’s a “harmless” condition, but I’m not so sure. Here’s what I do know:

I’m so unbelievably thankful it’s gone and that I don’t have bladder cancer

I need to hydrate the hell out of myself because I think there’s a strong correlation

I want to figure out how to prevent this from happening again or figure out why it happened in the first place

Showing my aunt proof of hydration.

Post-surgery, showing proof of hydration.

As I’m recovering, and so happy I only had to rest for 48 hours instead of the 7-10 days I was looking at if a biopsy had been done, I’ve been trying to research this as much as possible.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that some things just happen, there’s no explanation, and it’s probably best to just accept it and move on. At least I’m sure that’s what some people would do…

 

Have you had any experience with this or know anyone else who has?

Have you ever had a bad health scare? How did you handle it?

Do you always follow-up with your doctor or do you let things go?

 

 

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