retail health care.

I don't know if you've ever had a urinary tract infection, but I have. If not, I'll describe it for you. Think of a time when you had to pee so bad you thought your bladder was just going to burst. Not like hyperbolic burst, but actually explode inside your body and leak urine all over the place. You were actually concerned for your health. It's like that, but what's worse, it takes all the fun out of peeing. The fun of peeing is the wonderful relief you feel afterwards, at least that's the way it is for girls. My jealous heart says that boys have other kinds of fun associated with urination associated with portability. Anyway, with a UTI, there is no relief. When you finally make it to the toilet, bursting with pain and doing the got-to-pee dance, you have only a few droplets to give. Seriously, not enough for a mouse's urine specimen. And then, two to five minutes later, you have to pee again. And you know that you don't really have to go, it's just a measly few more drops, but you've been toilet-trained. It's really a terribly inconvenient condition.

So we've established that I know exactly what a urinary tract infection feels like. So Saturday afternoon, when I had to pee, and then I had to pee again immediately, I knew what was up. I went to the grocery store and bought a nice big jug of cranberry juice to start chugging. You can tell someone is having bladder troubles when they start buying cranberry juice like it's going out of style. No one knows why it works, only that everyone says it works and it sorta kinda seemed to work that one time and you'll try anything to not have to go to the bathroom every other minute.

Actually, I do know why cranberry juice works. It changes the acidity in your bladder, and the bacteria don't like it, so they bail. At least, that's the dumbed-down version that a nurse told me. She looked trustworthy.

I don't really have a doctor here, so I didn't want to worry about finding one just to go pee in a cup for them. So when I seemed cured on Sunday after having drunk about four times my daily allotment of vitamin C in the form of cranberry juice, I let the matter go. I forgot all about it until this morning, when I was reminded. Then I was reminded again, a couple minutes later. Then again, etc., etc., and so forth.

I drank the rest of my cranberry juice this morning, but decided that I should probably seek professional advice. So I decided to give the Minute Clinic a try. These are mini doctor's offices found in pharmacies. Their website calls it "retail health care," a phrase that scares the NPR listener in me. But I just wanted some drugs to fix my problems, and in an overdrugged society like ours, retail health care sounds exactly like the kind of place where I might find that.

The Minute Clinic is a tiny jail cell of a doctor's office in the corner of a CVS Pharmacy. I walked in, was told to go out again and sign in on the interactive kiosk, then invited immediately back inside the office because no one else was waiting. I told the nurse that I had a urinary tract infection. She gave me a small paper bag and told me where the bathrooms were.

I don't know if you've ever walked across a drug store with an empty urine specimen cup in a bag in your hand, but I have. I wondered the whole way who knew what was in the bag, who was smirking at me and the secret of what I was about to go do.

In the handicapped stall of a CVS Pharmacy bathroom, I peed in a cup. I don't feel like I need to go into any more detail than that. I will say that I once more thought about how easy boys have it when it comes to peeing.

I don't know if you've ever walked across a drug store with a bag containing a cup of your own urine, but I have. It was far worse than the walk to the bathroom. I imagined terrible scenarios where I might run into someone I knew, or even that I might physically run into anyone at all. I've never had cause to walk around in public with a cup of my (or anybody's) urine, and really, I see why people don't do it very often.

The nice nurse stuck a test strip in my cup, looked at the colors and gave me the prescription that I'd wanted all along. She also told me about cranberries in pill form and told me that I could fill my prescription at the pharmacy of my choice (ten bucks says she's required to say that). I crossed the drug store for the third time, this time carrying no urine (well, not externally) and got my antibiotics. I was out the door in forty-five minutes. I was only a little poorer, as the visit qualified as a basic visit on my insurance and the drug was a generic.

Retail health care still creeps me out. But when I know what is wrong with me and I just want to go in there and get something to fix it, it's hard to beat. It's even worth walking around in public carrying a fresh urine specimen.