Yep, that fluid stuff under your skin. Tricky stuff, half of it is blue, until it hits the air, then it turns red, the other half is red already.

Apparently its like oil in an engine. If it gets low things go bad. If oil shows up where it is not supposed to, then something should be done. The driveway is generally a good place to check for your engine maintenance.

If it’s your body, then perhaps the bathroom. Color is important in the bathroom. Unusual color is often from blood, unless asparagus/beets are involved. Although I have had several incidents when instead of urine, it was a stream of bright thick red blood.

That is so unusual that alarms go off. The first time it happened I thought I only had minutes left on this earth. It seemed like a pint each time I went to the bathroom. Not good for an engine to lose that much oil, really not good for a body either.

After much worry, my urologist cleared the issue up. Five years earlier I had successful radiation treatment on my prostrate. There was some scar tissue and now that had caused the bleeding. It would clear up in a few days.

It was still not pleasant to see a specific kind of fluid appear where it wasn’t supposed to, but it did clear up. Why wasn’t I told that this could happen five years ago? I could have had a heart attack! It happened again two years later, it was still shocking, but not a big deal.

So this week was another “fluid event”. This was concerning “sputum”, “phlegm”, or “mucus”. All disgusting words to describe a disgusting but normal object. And color is also important.

If the color is clear or white, things may be normal. If the color is yellow or greenish then perhaps a few alarms will go off. If the color is brown, leaning to red, then lots of alarms. Bleeding in the lungs is always serious, and sometimes deathly serious.

So I spent part of this month coughing. A lot of coughing, not from COVID or flu, just coughing. Then for a week it was brownish, then really brown. Alarms went off, things had to be done, experts had to be contacted. Oil was dripping on my driveway again.

There is a saying, that mostly, “things are simple.” I must admit I go there a lot, particularly when something happens to me that is brand new. It doesn’t have to be tuberculosis, or lung cancer, it could be an irritation or a slight case of pneumonia. I’ve never had pneumonia, so what do I know?

Now I know, and for a week I have two more pills to take everyday. The brown mucus has faded, the oil in the driveway has disappeared.

Now I just have to watch the amount of sugar in my oil.