written on November 10, 2014
Hematuria is a condition in which you have blood in the urine. Now, it can be microscopic (meaning not visible to the eye) or macroscopic (enough blood that it colors the urine pink or red). On Sunday (Nov 9) I had some serious macroscopic blood in the urine. A little worrisome, mostly because it’s one of the symptoms that you’re supposed to call the emergency clinic number about right away. And I didn’t call.
It also happened to me on Saturday, although not nearly as much. Saturday the urine was slightly pink, whereas yesterday (Sunday) it was decidedly more red with something clearly in it (most likely blood cells).
I should probably explain that both of these instances happened immediately after I went for a very long walk with my Mom – we did 1 hour and 10 minutes both Saturday and Sunday, which is the furthest I’ve walked in a long time (even on Halloween, when we were out trick-or-treating; we were out for just over an hour, but we didn’t actually walk that far). I’d say we probably covered close to 4 miles both days.
I mention this because I think that’s what caused the blood in the urine. Since I think the strenuous exercise is what caused the problem, I didn’t want to raise any red flags. And I also didn’t want to spend the night in the ER. My last experience at Cedars ER didn’t turn out that well (see the DAY 7 ER entry). I knew that if I called the clinic, they would have said go to the ER immediately and since it wasn’t a life-threatening emergency, I’m fairly certain I would have been there all night – literally all night. I’m not even certain I would have made it to clinic this morning.
Instead I took to Google, to look up the possible causes of blood in the urine. Most of the potential causes are all things I know I do not have – various infections, kidney or bladder stones, cancer, certain medications. But everywhere I looked, vigorous or strenuous exercise is always a potential cause as well.
It’s interesting to note that every website you hit that mentions vigorous or strenuous exercise as a potential cause has no explanation for why. And they say so on the website – this is from mayoclinic.org:
• Strenuous exercise. Although it happens rarely, it's not quite clear why strenuous exercise may lead to gross hematuria. It may be linked to trauma to the bladder, dehydration or the breakdown of red blood cells that occurs with sustained aerobic exercise. Runners are most often affected, although almost any athlete can develop visible urinary bleeding after an intense workout.
I’m guessing that that’s all it was. Because on both days, the next time I peed, there was no more blood. I also remember way back in 2001, while I was training for my first marathon, I did a 9-mile run on a Saturday morning and when I got back home, I had so much blood in the urine. At that point I was freaked out, but I didn’t think to go to the ER back then. Instead I waited until the following Monday, called my urologist, went in for the testing and he told me it was probably just dehydration or too much exercise.
So I’m going to chalk up this little episode to vigorous exercise. If the blood happens to recur without exercise, then I’ll know something else is going on.
I know, I know, blood in the urine is always a reason to call the doctor (and trust me when I say this – if you ever see blood in your urine, call your doctor right away – especially visible blood (it’s not usually called macroscopic – doctors refer to it as gross hematuria, and it is gross). Blood in the urine can definitely be the sign of something really serious so don’t ever think you can ignore it). In this instance, I’m playing on the side of everything is fine since the blood only happened once after exercise on both days and hasn’t been back since.
In clinic today, my doctor even said it’s probably nothing to worry about. But, since I’m getting my stent removed on Thursday, he said we’ll know for sure then. Part of the stent removal is taking imagery of the bladder to make sure there aren’t any problems or issues with the walls of the bladder or the muscles surrounding it. And they’re also going to be checking out that new ureter coming from my wife’s kidney. So if there is something wrong, I’ll get a definite answer on Thursday.
In the meantime, still no more blood in the urine, which is always a good thing. Just remember to get it checked out if it happens to you.