It turns out I've had a urinary tract infection for the better part of a week. Each day I felt like I was getting a little better, and I remembered that every time I thought about going to a doctor. On Thursday and Friday I started with horrible abdominal/kidney pain, which finally pushed me into going to a clinic. After an hour-and-a-half wait (I shouldn't have gone on the Friday before a long weekend... when at least two other clinics in town had closed early), finally got a diagnosis and some antibiotics. I'm feeling significantly better today, but I'm kicking myself for not going to a doctor sooner because I thought I could beat it on my own.
This isn't even the worst thing I've ignored though. A few years ago, I had what I thought was a cold and a nasty fever. I started coughing all the time. It got worse and worse, I could hardly breathe, my stomach muscles hurt, there was a sucking feeling in my chest whenever I breathed in, and I had a fever, so I was constantly freezing. I tried to take it easy and continue as normal, and because I didn't have any other flu-like symptoms, I didn't think I was contagious either. The day before I saw a doctor, I had a shift to TA a computer science lab. I was feeling a little better, so I decided to do it instead of having someone cover for me. The moment I got off the bus, I started feeling ill again. I spent the entire 2 1/2 hour lab coughing violently on my students. At the end, one of them actually came up to me and said, quite earnestly, "Don't die".
I went to the university medical centre the next day, which referred me to a clinic down the street for a chest x-ray. I found out later that day that I had pneumonia. OOoops.
So, Hubski. What's your "I should've gotten help for this long ago" moment?
Oooh! I might get a prize for this one! Thought I had a pneumothorax, a small hole in the lining of my lung. Just takes some antibiotics to fix, or so the google-machine told me. I was on my way to Paris for vacation and didn't want to bother until I got home. Got home and made an appointment to see the doctor after the weekend. I saw the doctor 11 days after the first indication of trouble. Turns out if I had waited a few more days I'd have been dead. They drained 3 liters of fluid out my lung in 24 hours, and continued to drain a liter a day for a month. Lymphoma. 3 years chemo, radiotherapy, surgery, the works. Moral: when it hurts to breathe, it's probably not nothing!
Whenever I start to feel a UTI, I chug a couple glasses of cranberry juice. It's always knocked it right out. My mom and her mom and most likely her mom also got them and taught me about cranberry juice. I've never gone to a doctor or had one last more than a day. Advil will also almost immediately alleviate the annoying pain but I've been warned to be careful as if it gets worse, but you are hiding the pain, you won't know when it gets bad enough to see a doctor.