Infectious Weekend

This weekend was interesting. A combination of fun and painful. How weird, huh?!
On Friday, I began to feel the onset of a bladder infection. Before I had Andrew (5 1/2 years ago), I would get bladder infections once a month. So, needless to say, I know the symptoms even though I've only had 1 bad infection since Andrew's been born.
It got pretty bad Friday night while Jeremy and I were grocery shopping. I had read online about some natural cures for bladder infections so I was picking up some cranberry juice, grape juice, Vitamin C and AZO Standard (that numbs the pain). I kept reading about a natural supplement called D-Mannose so we were looking for that, too. Apparently this is a natural cure for bladder infections. It is the stuff that is in cranberry juice that washes out the bacteria. I couldn't find it at any of the 4 stores we looked. Luckily, chugging cranberry juice and taking the AZO & Vitamin C got me through that night.
Jeremy played basketball the following morning in Coolidge so he drove to Casa Grande to check out the health food stores. He found D-Mannose and he found it cheaper than what everyone online was saying it costs. Whew!
So, I began taking that, too, while chugging the juices and water. I felt pretty good Saturday.
This is were the fun begins: Since I didn't have any plans for the day, I decided to scrapbook. I also invited some girlfriends over to scrapbook with me. April, Mindy, and Melissa came over and hung out. Their husbands hung out with Jeremy and the kids ran wild! We had a GREAT time, I got quite a few pages completed and I didn't get to bed until 1 am!
I woke up for church Sunday surprisingly easy considering my late night. I began drinking water and took more D-Mannose right away. My bladder was fine... Until about noon.
(Now we're back to the pain): Bladder infections for me feel like you have to go pee really bad, but when you try to go nothing comes out. So, I've been drinking water all morning and I can't get anything to come out. My bladder really felt like it was going to burst. I don't know what changed, why suddenly it got bad like that after a day and a half of feeling better.
Well, that's not the worst part. The next time I tried to go, I see blood! That has never happened to me in all of my previous bladder infections. Now, I'm bummed. We don't have insurance and I know that I have to go to Urgent Care. Ugh! So much for natural remedies.
Fortunately, the Urgent Care was not busy and I was in and out quickly. Same with Walgreen's; they weren't busy either, so I had my prescription in my hand within 15 minutes. Also, it cost us only $80.00 more for the Urgent Care visit, the urine culture, and the prescription that it would have with our previous health insurance plan. That's it! We were paying $660.00/month for health insurance and never going to the doctor. I have maybe one urgent care visit per year, I would have one well check-up/exam, and Andrew would have one well check-up on average ever year (and we were paying $660.00/month for a long time). What a waste.
Now, don't freak out, we have a high deductible plan in case anything big happens that we would need to be admitted to the hospital for and we are in the process of opening up an HSA account through our bank. We will have money taken out (pre-taxed) from Jeremy's checks for the HSA account. We would still be cash patients, but we will use the HSA account for any health issues/doctor visits/prescriptions. That money will continue to grow in the account month after month, year after year, and hopefully grow quite large in case I ever get pregnant again or we have a major medical issue.
Anyway, back to my weekend. Here's the fun part again: I have my medicine and realize my bladder feels better when I lay down. So, I got a two hour nap on a Sunday afternoon! Now, that's FUN! However, it was sad because we missed eating lunch with everyone from church at my favorite pizza place. =(
I woke up just in time to go to a church in Casa Grande where Mindy's dad was preaching a Revival! I've known for a couple weeks now that I had to go. Of course, I wasn't sure why I had to go, but I was expecting God to do something great. And He did, of course! It was great to finally meet Mindy's dad and we got to go out to eat with them after the service and get to know him a little. Good times!