It happened on a Tuesday afternoon. I went to the bathroom, expecting a routine visit. I looked down, and my heart stopped.
I noticed my urine was pink.
Panic didn’t just set in; it took the wheel and drove me off a cliff. I washed my hands with the intensity of a surgeon about to operate on himself. I ran to my laptop, my fingers trembling as I typed in the symptoms.
I spent three hours on WebMD.
I spiraled. It wasn’t dehydration. It wasn’t a UTI. According to the internet, my days were numbered.
I was diagnosing myself with a rare, tropical kidney disease that is usually only found in tree frogs in the Amazon.
I lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling fan, coming to terms with my mortality. I thought about all the things I hadn’t done. I thought about who would get my comic book collection. I needed to make peace.
I called my mom to say goodbye.
“Mom,” I rasped, trying to sound brave. “I don’t have much time. I love you. Please take care of the cat.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, sounding more annoyed than devastated.
“My kidneys,” I whispered. “The end is near. The water… it’s pink.”
There was a long silence on the other end. Not a silence of grief, but of calculation.
“‘Did you eat that roasted beet salad I gave you for lunch?’” she asked.
I froze. The memory of the delicious, earthy, bright red vegetable salad came flooding back.
I hung up immediately.
I sat there in the silence, feeling the blood rush to my face, realizing that I wasn’t dying of a jungle pathogen. I am fine. I wasn’t a medical tragedy; I was just a man who had forgotten the fundamental laws of digestion. I never called her back to explain. I just let her believe the line went dead, because that was less embarrassing than admitting I had almost planned a funeral for a root vegetable.
