yes, i am still talking about my urinary tract

Panic not, dear friends, the cranberry juice hit the spot (ugh) and I am healthy again.  Well, as healthy as a woman who eats a diet based on a food pyramid with a bottom row of cheese can be.  SRSLY though, UTIs are the bane of my existence.  I had issues with them as a very wee girl, then again persistently in my early 20s.  They’re slightly more infrequent now, but I suspect that’s because of a long term course of god-awfully strong antibiotics America prescribed me (I felt terribly guilty for antibiotic blasting my system so I converted to the cranberry cure which MIRACULOUS.  There was this one time in Hong Kong when I had to drink about 50 litres of juice because the cranberry content was so low but drink it I did and lo, I was cured). 

What did women who lived in, say, 1563, do about this?  Probably lived in persistent pain and terror and died early from childbirth?  Let’s face it; I’d be totally f’d if I’d been born then.  Given I’m now 30, I’ve probably busted the Tudor life expectancy by heapses and, if not, I should have had about 8 pregnancies or something similar.  I was going to say doesn’t bear thinking about but it kind of puts writing a cruddy email to my workplace about being late into perspective, no?  Plus, this is also a cross for much of womankind to bear, isn't it?  I don't think I've met a 30 year old who doesn't know that particular version of pain?

There are other things I might have struggled with if born in 1563, on reflection, such as a loud mouth and fundamental laziness (I NEVER want to handwash.  Imagine if ALL your washing was handwashing.  THE INHUMANITY.) 

Writing all of this down has sent me on a memory lane bender: Memorable UTI Edition.  God that’s awful.  Look away now, as I record them for posterity:

-     The One at My Hall of Residence, 2001, The First As An Adult And I Totally Thought I Was Dying But Also a Diseased Whore

-     The One When I Made P Walk Me To Urgent Care in the Middle of A Cold, Cold Dunedin Night, circa 2002

-     The One When I Was on a Plane To Go See My Mother With My Sister And I Made Them Drive Me Directly To Urgent Care, circa 2005 ish, And My Mother Made Jokes About Sex. 

-     The One in Hong Kong (see above)

-     The One Where I Finally Used That Expensive American Health Insurance, While P Suffered From Pink Eye And Visited a Dodgy Back Alley Doctor

In conclusion, I am grateful for cranberry, antibiotics and urgent care doctors.  Modernity, at its most convenient.