There’s no place like home.

More specifically, there’s no place like your own potty.

I have just returned from a trip down South.  I am from the Southiest part of the country, San Diego, and I spent a week there visiting family.

Which was all very well and fine but it meant spending a week with foreign facilities. 

It started off fine.  I was based at my sister and brother-in-law’s house and was given my own designated loo. 

But while I spent my first 34 years in San Diego, I have been living in Oregon thereafter.  I was in Western Oregon first and well, let’s just leave it that after living in the Willamette Valley for two years, I no longer fear Hell.

Since then, I have been in Central Oregon and I have become acclimated.  I live at around 3700 feet elevation and down at sea level in San Diego, there seems to be way too much oxygen.  It kind of sloshes around in all of the humidity.  My blood is now thicker and I just don’t handle the heat too well.

Saturday night, despite drinking way more fluids than I’m used to, I became severely dehydrated and as a result, got rather sick.

You females know what I’m talking about.  We tend to get urinary-tract infections (UTIs) at the drop of a hat and I got slammed with a doozy.

But it was embarrassing and I was having to go to the bathroom about every minute and a half and I was too mortified to be traipsing up and down the hallway late at night so after a couple of hours of this torment, I grabbed a pillow and camped out in the bathroom and screamed into a towel so I wouldn’t wake up the neighborhood.

I didn’t want to go to the emergency room because the news is all full of stories about how the most dangerous place for contracting disease is the emergency room.  Even though I have survived the swine flu and received my seasonal flu shot, I could just see me in the headlines as the first American to come down with the never-before-seen goat flu.

I made it through the night but the next day, my father’s birthday, my physical activity consisted of me asking him to operate the television remote control.  I was spent.

Thinking things couldn’t possibly get worse; I continued to use the alien lav only to have it more or less explode on me, also late at night.

I knew my sister and brother-in-law’s house had the low-flow toilets.  As far as I know, all of California does and I am familiar with the rules regarding them.  You flush early and often. 

I get it.

But there I was and I flushed and, rather than gently overflowing or just swishing aimlessly around, the toilet spewed upward.  There were arcs, and when the light hit it just right, rainbows.

Rather than be charmed by the water and light show, I was embarrassed beyond any previous limit I had reached with the midnight UTI.  I flung open the cabinet to find my sister had stocked it with approximately 412 towels, most of which I used.  Trust me; after I was through, that bathroom sparkled.   Including the ceiling. 

I was left with a small mountain of damp linen, wet pajama bottoms and a still-full potty when I realized I had no choice but to wake up my hosts to request a plunger.  I seriously considered using an arm or other limb to dislodge the clog myself but at this point, I figured I really had nothing more to lose on the image front.

I knocked on their door and begged for a plunger only to have my sister, the retired police officer, literally leap from her bed ready to do battle.  She alerted her husband (also a retired cop) who reached for his loaded firearm just in case the bad guys had decided to first attack using Ty-D-Bol.   I assured them I could handle the problem if they would just tell me where to find the plunger.   A few bubbly plunges later, the problem was solved, but by this time, my shame was permanent. 

After two days of driving the length of the state of California and most of Oregon, I pulled into town and rather than go home, I went straight to the clinic, marched up to the window, announced I had an UTI and demanded a cup.

Normally I would have been too ashamed to have done so but by this time, my reserves had been drained.