I woke up a cold, late December morning to a sore back and hips.  My body had been the victim of my sexual appetite for past couple of days, and it seemed that nothing could stop me from pretty much nagging my boyfriend into making sexy with me.  Thankfully his bathroom was about three feet from his bed, so it was only a matter of rolling myself to the foot of his California King and shyly venturing a warm foot onto cold tile to get to the toilet.  My nude body tensed and awoke when it made contact with a frozen white toilet seat.  But I relaxed and let it flow until Shit Mother Fucker Shit!  It felt like I was trying to pass a burning match through my vagina.

I knew – more like hoped – that it was not an STD because my boyfriend and I get tested together, so unless he was a slick bastard, it was some other problem.  I decided to turn to the ever-faithful Google for the answer to my burning query.  Turns out, I had a Urinary Tract Infection.  Although anyone can get this infection, it is most commonly found in sexually active women.  Crikey.  I’ve never been pregnant or had an STD, but the sex gods still managed to get me.

As I am not big on doctors, cold hands, or hospitals, I decided to continue searching the web for home remedies for my situation.  The answer was cranberry juice and more water.  My mom has been telling me about the wonders of cranberry juice since that first ride along the crimson tide, yet apparently I hadn’t gotten the message.  I had the boyfriend take me to the nearest grocery store so I could get myself some cranberry juice.  I got the super organic unsweetened stuff in a glass bottle from a bog in Vermont, just to be certain that I got the full cranberry effect.  Who knew that cranberries in their purest form were more pungent than biting into pickled limes?

I kept on the cranberry juice and water regimen, which only meant that I was peeing at an accelerated rate.  And the more I peed, the more tears I shed.  The next morning I woke up and it felt like my stomach was being used to tether a ship.  It wasn’t a woman-time pain, it was far worse. From then on, I began to contemplate my suicide.  I figured that I needed to take that cranberry juice more seriously.  I drank more juice, I braved the sting of my pee, but the pain only seemed to worsen.  It was definitely time to go to the hospital, but not until after Christmas.

I stomached two ibuprofen, got as sexy as one can be in flat shoes, and went to the Christmas Eve party that my best friend was throwing.  I felt like a diabetic at Willy Wonka’s watching the overflow of an open bar in which I could not participate.  I asked the bartender for a cranberry juice and imagined the taste of Grey Goose vodka.  Moreover, I could barely hold a conversation because it seemed that with every complicated thought came the desire to pee.  I asked around for another ibuprofen.  In a room full of women, there will always be at least one walking pharmacy.  I thanked her with every frail bone in my body.

“Cramps?” she asked as she handed me my pills.

“No, I have a UTI,” I answered back, almost hoping that she was my fairy godmother and that she would save me.

“Well, do you pee after sex?”

I wanted to answer, ‘Eventually.‘  How am I supposed to remember each time I pee?

She seemed to fathom my hesitation, because she said, “Girl, if you can’t shower immediately after sex, then make sure you pee.”

As soon as she said it, I was like ‘Duh!’  I’m no nurse or anything, and the thought of anything scientific makes me want to cry, but it’s so obvious.  Your urine washes away that nasty boy-bacteria that you collect on your flower during sex.  Why no one had told me before, I wondered.  I was doubled over in pain and unable to drink on Christmas Eve, and the solution was as simple as taking a slightly inconvenient piss.  I took the ibuprofen and felt deceptively better.  I even drank a little… a lot.  I had to make up for the drinks that I missed in addition to taking advantage of the fact that the bar was more open than a hooker on crack after she’d made her nightly quota.

I woke up on Christmas morning feeling like Santa had run out of coal and given me a UTI instead.  I was in more pain than before, thanks to my good judgment the night before.  I just had to make it through my Dad’s Christmas breakfast and then I could hit that ER.  In my father’s eyes, I am still a virgin, so I made no mention of my illness and thanked him and his wife graciously when he handed me my gift.

I was the first to dash off.  I took a cab to the hospital where I was one of only a few people.  There was a boy who had slipped on some ice and a baby with an ear infection, but apparently, sick people don’t go to the hospital on Christmas Day.  In the examination room, I was told that my UTI had progressed to a severe infection, and I almost laughed.  Guess all that cranberry juice didn’t do much.  I swallowed the first installment of my prescription and from then on I vowed to be the voice behind the movement, telling women to pee after sex.

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Karen is a young writer born in Boston, now writing from Atlanta.  You can follow her at www.lovealise.com or @xlovealise on twitter.