As the week progresses, I must say that my recovery is going well. Things itch where I can’t scratch them and I’m accepting that as an undeniable indicator of the healing process. Monday is just around the corner (when I can take out this catheter once and for all), even though it feels like it’s taking forever to get here. I’m not using my pain medicine during the day and it’s all quite bearable so I guess I’m doing o.k.
One thing that this surgery has given me the opportunity to do is to see what actually comes out of me. Having been instructed to drink a LOT of water this week, I’ve been drinking about double my normal consumption of water, I’m guessing about 2 gallons or so a day. That doesn’t include the iced tea that I have with lunch or supper or the juice I have in the morning. I used to also have a Diet Pepsi for my afternoon treat.
Notice I just said “used to”.
I’ve dinked (no pun intended) with the idea of giving up soda for the past couple of years but have always given in and started back up again. When I started having the difficulties, I read online that soda consumption can aggrevate the your bladder and associated plumbing. I began to look for a correlation and sure enough, when I drank soda, it made it even harder for me to urinate (which wasn’t an easy task to begin with). Then I read my friend Kook’s experience with drinking soda and the ulcers it gave him. So I cut way back to one 20 oz bottle a day and pretty much whatever was available to me on the weekend. I shudder to think that when I was doing the night shift on the radio, I was drinking at least a two-liter bottle of Pepsi (or sometimes even Jolt!) during my four hour air shift! I was so jacked up I think I licked the ceiling a couple of times.
Anyways, I’ve noticed that my urine is much darker and a little thicker after drinking the diet soda I’ve been having in the afternoon. It’s only for about an hour or so, then it goes back to the pale yellow, almost clear stuff that I’ve been seeing otherwise. It’s kind of neat being able to see what’s what, because usually everything mixes in the toilet and you get an odd shade of green (when mixed with the blue treated water) or some other derivative of the rainbow. Except magenta or violet. Magenta or violet in the toilet would make me nervous.
So today I am going without my little caffeine boost to see if the pattern continues. If it does, then I have to figure out what else in my diet is affecting things. But I have my money on the soda.
Just say no!
