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When I first meant to write this post last week, a whole bunch of titles kept going through my mind.  There was, "Third Time's A Charm," refencing the fact that this is the third post containing something stupid that I have done.  Other titles along those lines were, "Not Too Bright," a sarcastic "Fun Times!" and my personal favorite, "I OD'ed on Baking Soda."  See, that's the one that really get's people wondering.

I woke up last Monday morning feeling the start of a urinary tract infection.  The kids were home for the second week in a row of vacation from MCP, so I was both trying to catch up with laundry and housework and do home school with them, which basically translates to - I did not have time to go to the doctor.   Plus, my mom had a doctor's appointment of her own to go to, Brian's mom was helping someone who was having surgery on her hand that day, and when lunch time rolled around and things were really starting to hurt down there, I knew that Tallia was going grocery shopping for Thanksgiving dinner, Christina was taking her daughter to Seminary, and Erin had to be home for her girls to come home on the bus from school.  I didn't want to bother anyone, especially since every other experience I've had with the urgent care here involved a six hour wait.

I started the morning by just trying to flush it through my system by drinking lots of water. I hoped that I was wrong in my suspicions, and didn't really have a UTI, and that by drinking lots of water, I would end up feeling better.  Then, when it started to hurt, and then hurt worse, I was just looking for a way to help me make it through the day until Brian came home so I could head over to urgent care at that point.  Looking up, "home remedies uninary tract infection" on Google brought up cranberry juice (didn't have any) and baking soda water.  I decided to give the baking soda water a try.  While the kids had lunch, I mixed up a cup of water with a teaspoon of baking soda, drank it, then had one more glass of it while cleaning up after lunch.  Without really thinking things through, I was still thinking along the lines of "flush it out," so I went ahead and made up a mason jar with three cups of water and three teaspoons of baking soda, put a movie on for the kids, and went upstairs to take a warm bath.

I made it through about 3/4 of an episode of "Vampire Diaries," which I wasn't too impressed with, before I started to feel incredibly ill.  Incredibly ill.  I looked down and noticed that my belly looked to be about four months pregnant - no exaggeration.  I felt extremely nauseated, but I was never able to throw up, and soon the diarrhea started.  Yes, I do realize that I'm full if TMI on this blog.

So I ended up on the toilet, with a towel spread out in front of me to catch the throw up that never came.  Oh, it was horrible, and it kept getting worse and worse.  Seriously.  Like twenty times worse than any flu or food poisoning I've ever had.  Added to the nausea and diarrhea was tingling fingers and lips, and my whole body was shaking.  This was when I thought that no matter what was going on in their lives, I should call one of my sisters to come help.  It took me a few minutes to come to this realization, because I had no clothes on, and I was at the point where I didn't want anything to touch my skin, and at first I wondered how I would let anyone help me if I didn't want them to see me naked.  Then it got bad enough that I didn't care.

While getting off the toilet and heading across the bathroom to get my phone, everything started to spin and move side to side, and get all wonky.  I grabbed my phone, thought, "What if I pass out, and there's no one here but my kids?" and called 911.

Now, this wasn't my first time calling 911.  Remember I called 911 early one morning when Alyssa went with me on her bike while I ran and I lost her and couldn't find her anywhere?  That was the first time, and even though I was scared to death, and we had only lived in our house for a week or two, I was able to correctly give our address to the dispatcher.  This time, the second time,  I gave him about three variations of our address, with the numbers all mixed up and crazy, and even when I said, "Yes, that's it, I'm sure," I wasn't really sure.  After a few minutes of talking to the dispatcher, I could feel that surge of energy that came with this sickness all of a sudden start to leave my body.  I told him that it seemed to be going away.  "Yeah, I think I'm getting better," I said.  He told me that help was on its way, and we got off the phone.

This is when I got around to calling Christina.  I think I said, "Hi, I need you.  There's an ambulance coming, but I need you.  It's not that big of a deal though."  Of course, she said that she would be there right away, and she even beat the ambulance to my house.

When Christina arrived I was feeling better, but I was still very shaky.  I had put on a robe by that time, and it was uncomfortable and clingy since I never really dried off from the bath, and I was walking about the kitchen and family room, because I couldn't sit still.   Christina started cleaning up the goldfish crackers that Marcus had apparently dumped out in the family room, and I decided to at least go put some pajamas on.

So the ambulance came, four or five guys came in to check me, which took a while, because I kept having to rush to the bathroom.  They called poison control, and the lady there said that for my weight, six teaspoons is toxic.  I never got the exact definition of toxic.  Five teaspoons felt pretty toxic to me.  She kept asking me what kind of teaspoons they were, and when she started talking about how some people grab a spoon and do heaping teaspoonfuls and other people actually use a teaspoon and level it off like they're baking a cake, I said, "Oh, I make cake all the time.  I would never not level off my teaspoon."

It was decided that I was well enough to not have to go to the hospital.  Instead, I spent about a half hour telling Christina how stupid I felt while she swept my kitchen and straightened up the family room.  Then, I went to urgent care and was indeed diagnosed with a UTI.  And apparently the baking soda did help a little, because I was able to wait in the urgent care waiting room for a couple of hours without being too uncomfortable.  All in all, though, it wasn't a very good way of putting off going to the doctors office.

My favorite parts in all of this - When the EMT's were making sure I was okay, Marcus kept trying to give them glasses of ice water.  Before I called Brian's office to let him know everything, I sent him a text that said, "The ambulance just left.  Everything is fine," just to see what he would say back, but I don't think he saw it until after I called him.

I've run out of time to write about all the other things I wanted to say, so the other news will have to wait for its own post.  With so much time passing since last week, I almost decided to just skip this blog post, but I feel that leaving this story out, no matter how embarrassing and stupid it was, would almost leave an untrue history.  Plus there were so many lessons I learned.  Ask for help when you need it.  Don't rely on the internet to be your doctor.  And clean your house before calling 911, because if you don't, and you tell them you're sick because you drank five glasses of baking soda water in less than an hour, it makes you look like even more of a crazy person.