Today was the renal lab in physiology class. This involved peeing in a cup and dipping a number of strips into it to test for various things. No big deal, right? Every physiology lab I've ever been in has done this very same lab. I expected nothing out of the ordinary.
Imagine my surprise when several members of the class launched into a barrage of questions about drinking one's own urine. Literally, like 12 questions! You would think that it goes without saying that drinking one's own urine is TOTALLY unacceptable unless stuck in one of three following scenarios...
1. If you find yourself stranded in the desert, urine could be used to sustain life for a VERY brief period of time
2. If you find yourself lost at sea with no fresh water in site, urine could be used to sustain life for a VERY brief period of time
3. You wake up one day to find that you've become Bear Grylls and you're required to do so for your asinine TV show where you actually sleep in hotels instead of the "wild".
...but you'd be wrong. My classmates wanted to know ALL about drinking their own pee. I had to ask myself, "What the FUCK is wrong with people?!?!?!". My poor professor fielded the questions as seriously as he could for a little while, but then literally threw up his hands and stated that the lecture needed to move on. Seriously. SO strange.
But the strangest things were yet to come. Of all the immature mutterings about urine I heard during the course of the lab, my favorite was "Hey, my pee smells like Cheerios!". This caught my attention because I have often thought that very same thing. Interesting.
Even stranger yet, one of the tests we performed on our cups of wee today was for the presence of blood. As soon as I dipped my test strip in, it turned a deep, deep shade of green, indicating I have quite a large amount of blood in my urine. Hmmm. I don't feel sick, and usually a UTI isn't asymptomatic. Usually, they REALLY suck. My professor quickly called everyone over to see what a positive test looked like. Not gonna lie...I was pretty embarrassed. He did this again for someone in the class that had a large amount of glucose in their urine, but no one owned up to the positive test tube.
All in all, it was a most bizarre day. Just when I expected nothing remarkable, I'm forced to admit this has been the most interesting and weird urinary lab I've ever taken part in.
3 comments:
Not even gonna try to lie.
Totally have had the Cheerios thought. And, after spending the last several months around quads and paras getting catheterized, I'll admit, I've had it about 3rd parties too... WTF? Any ideas?
After nearly 20 minutes of pee-drinking questions, I was hesitant to ask where the Cheerios smell comes from.
I honestly have zero ideas. Its strange, though.
I have never experienced this, nor do I think my pee smells funny after having had asparagus. I was always under the impression that I metabolized asparagus differently and therefore did not produce this smell, but then I learned that it's actually my nose that lacks something that can detect asparagus pee. So it's a detection issue not a pee issue. Maybe cheerio pee is the same.
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