5,500 mL

1.45 gallons

That’s the quantity of urine that my wife is capable of producing in a single 24-hour period.

I shouldn’t know this particular statistic. No man should be this intimately familiar with that particular function of his partner’s body, and yet here I am. I know it now, and I don’t think that my brain has even the most minute possibility of purging this information … much in the same way that my wife purged 5,500 mL of urine from her bladder last weekend on an otherwise sunny and pleasant Sunday afternoon…

At this point you’re probably asking yourself a couple of questions:

  1. Why in the world is he telling us this???
  2. Is that normal??? Do *I* pee 1.45 gallons of urine on an average day?!
  3. What in the world does he need a gallon and a half of his wife’s urine for, anyways?!?!?!

I probably should’ve clarified for #3 right off the bat – I didn’t personally ask for this urine sample to end all urine samples from my lovely wife! It was, most definitely in fact, a trained medical professional who requested said gargantuan sample for reasons thankfully undisclosed to yours truly. I have no idea what he needed all 1.45 gallons for, nor do I really want to know what kooky, lab experiments he could possibly be cooking up for which a normal, Dixie cup-sized sample of urine wouldn’t have been nearly sufficient.

If there’s one rule that I live by, it’s don’t ask too many questions when it comes to large quantities of urine.

And yet despite having that mantra that has served me well over all of these years, I still found myself nonetheless caught up in their weird urine games all the same in that – conveniently – it was late that Sunday night when suddenly and without warning, I found myself notified of the somewhat less desirable than a hole in the head-task that *I* would need to partake in the next morning, in that yours truly had been chosen as the dedicated individual who would be required to deliver said urine from our home to the doctor’s office…

But wait – it gets better!

Because you see believe it or not, there’s one thing worse than actually delivering another person’s urine. You wouldn’t think that there could possibly be anything higher on the list, but there is!

Because the one thing that’s worse than having to deliver another person’s urine is … getting there and finding that the doctor’s office is closed…

…and you’re left just standing there…

…with a jug full of urine in each hand, and no place else to turn…

Well, fortunately our story does have somewhat of a happy ending, in that after several entirely cheerful phone calls to the original owner of said urine, it turned out that the staff was simply “in training” and “they would be back that afternoon.” Of course, the only question one can ask at that point – when they’re standing in an empty parking lot, flanked by two orange containers full of someone else’s urine – was what I could possibly do with said urine between “now” and “this afternoon” when they ever-planning doctor’s office staff was to return.

“Could I just leave it by the front door … with a note or something???”

“No – it has to stay refrigerated.”

That was the actual conversation that took place in that parking lot on that very day, and frankly, there’s really no polite way to respond when someone tells you not only that you’re going to have to haul their urine around just a while longer due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict, but furthermore, you’re going to have to find a place TO PUT IT ON ICE when you get to wherever you’re going!!!

And so as the lovingly loyal and obedient husband that I am, that’s what I did.

When I hung up the phone, I loaded 1.45 gallons of urine back into my car.

And when I reached my final destination, I carried 1.45 gallons of urine inside with me, and put it in the fridge right next to other people’s lunches.

Ironically, on my way another person commented that they were sure jealous to see the size of my lunch, to which I could only shake my head and reply, “I’d be happy to trade if you’d like…”

But I think the worst part of this whole crazy, urine-laden adventure – when it all came to its final close – was that when I eventually did return to that same doctor’s office some several hours later, and I handed two orange jugs full of urine over the counter to the nurse on the other side, all she replied was a simple, “Thank you.”

Because apparently being in the healthcare field where she was, this woman had grown so accustomed to large quantities of urine that me handing her another 1.45 gallons didn’t even phase her in the slightest … just another urine-filled day at the office … nothing strange or comical about it.

A single tear ran slowly down my face as I closed the office door behind me and silently walked back to my car, briefly unsure of how I was now going to fill the void that 1.45 gallons of urine had left in my life.

Then my wife called to relay a message from the doctor that the sample had been out for too long, and that they’d have to do it again … and then she admitted that she was joking … and it was only then that my tenure as The Urine Courier was officially over…