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Guaranteed, anyone with access to real healthcare would've had that checked out immediately.

You can't just not say what it was

I'm very sorry that you went through that. I know it sucks with the American healthcare $ystem, but you are always allowed to seek a second opinion and any provider that is opposed to that is a bad provider and you shouldn't see them again anyways.

One thing to keep in mind about the ER though, is that they're there to rule out anything that is going to kill you quickly, and if you didn't lose enough blood to drop your hemoglobin count (a measure of how many red blood cells you have), it is perfectly within the standard of care for them to discharge you and tell you to follow up with your primary care physician or a specialist. The ER has a lot of resources, but not enough resources to fully diagnose every possible problem. They can make sure you're not on death's doorstep, and stabilize you if you are, but beyond that, they're pretty strapped for resources and staffing which make it hard to fully work up every mystery diagnosis.

I see it as financial weakness and thus rarely go.

Many if not most men are like this. It's usually their wives or another woman in their lives that drags them in when something is about to fall off. It's another way in which husbands leave 71% of a household’s ‘mental load’ on their wives, down to their own well being.

That’s a whole part of my cynical conservative upbringing that I have to consciously work against.

You can’t do the obvious thing you’re SUPPOSED to do. What are you, some kind of sucker and/or [gay slur]?

Semi-Funny story. I had never eaten beets before, but I started eating those beet and sea salt chips (so good!), and I freaked the fuck out when I peed red that next morning.

I have hella good healthcare through my job, and so I made an appointment with my primary care doc right away, and he was like "Any changes to your diet?"

Felt bad about wasting his time, but Jesus, I was not expecting that amount of red in the bowl!

Yeah I'm pretty sure that's a key sign of kidney failure. It can happen rarely in cases of some crazy workouts, but if this dude is saying all the time then it's probably something worse.

Yeah, bladder cancer.

Piss is blood, in a sense. It's the bits of your blood that get sieved out and rejected by your kidneys.

Normally those are the only bits supposed to be getting out. But if the filter is busted (kidney trouble) or if the walls of the storage tank it sits in after filtering become damaged (bladder trouble), you can end up pissing actual, unfiltered blood.

Alternatively, you ate something recently with a strong red pigment that can survive digestion, enter the bloodstream, get strained out by the kidneys, and collect in your piss in high enough concentration to turn it red. Beets are a pretty famous culprit.

Not only bladder cancer but a whole bunch of things. I used to run home from work and I would always pee right beforehand so I wouldn't risk having to find some sort of place to pee, but then I started peeing blood every couple of weeks when my mileage went up to around the 10 mile mark. Apparently hematuria can happen from basically having a totally empty bladder chafe itself raw if you run long enough lol. I quit peeing before leaving work after my doctor recommended giving that a shot and it cleared up

Let's not rule out bladder cancer.

Can confirm, dude is indeed dumb ;-)

If symptoms linked to kidney failure isn't enough to send you to the doctor...

Painless gross haematuria is one of the most common first signs of bladder cancer. A very treatable cancer for most people. Peeing blood for no reason can be bad. It can also be beats.

Holy fuck just go to the doctor so at least they can do simple blood work and make sure it's nothing obvious. I pissed blood once, turns out along with the leg pain my kidneys were about to shut down. Go to the fucking doctor

Look at Constantine over here, cursed to live.