Okay gotta tell you guys about this total mess with those orange pee pills. Started when my wife was dealing with that burning feeling down there, you know? Doctor told her to take AZO for relief while we wait for test results. Big mistake.
The Stupid Simple Plan
My bright idea? Check if taking AZO screwed up her pee test like everyone online argues about. Seems straightforward, right? Grab the pills, pee in cups, run strips. Easy. Reality? Chaos.
First, I rushed to the drugstore, bought the AZO box flashing cash like a dummy. Got home, opened it, spilled half the pills on the kitchen floor. Scooped ’em up fast before the cat attacked. Red dust everywhere on my hands. Looked like a crime scene.
My wife took one pill with water, making a face. She hates swallowing pills. We waited. And waited. Watched terrible TV for like 90 minutes until she finally felt the urge.
The Disaster Testing Phase
Operation Pee Collection began. I handed her two big, stupidly flimsy plastic cups.
- Cup One: Pure pee. Bright yellow. Normal smell. Did the strip test thing right away. Colors changed. Glucose? Negative. Protein? Negative. Leukocytes? Negative. All clear.
- Cup Two: The “after AZO” sample. Holy oranges! Liquid looked like straight-up neon Hi-C. Scary orange. Even stranger? Smelled almost like medicine, kinda chemical-y. Poured some into a second cup, dunked the test strip. Instant confusion.
The leukocytes pad turned this deep, weird purple – way darker than the chart said. Nitrites? Looked kinda positive-ish, a pale pink instead of white. Protein pad had this faint green tint that wasn’t even ON the stupid color guide. Totally useless. Stared at it for five minutes, flipping the strip, holding it to the light. Nope. Total garbage reading.
The Awful Truth & Consequences
Conclusion? Yeah, AZO absolutely messes with urinalysis strips. It paints everything orange, throws the colors way off, makes the results useless. Doctor later confirmed it: “Never test while taking those.” But guess what? We already messed up.
Because I insisted on doing this dumb test at home, we wasted two days. Wife was miserable. We re-did the test later WITHOUT AZO, turns out she DID have an infection. Needed real antibiotics. She suffered longer because of me and my bright idea.
Worse? Told my boss (lab tech at a small clinic) about my experiment, showing photos. He went white. Turns out a patient brought in super orange pee THAT MORNING, complaining of UTI symptoms. Our lazy staff ran the strip anyway, got weird results like mine, and shrugged it off as “probably negative.” Patient likely had an infection we missed because nobody thought about AZO.
Boss called the patient back in, furious. Guess who got blamed for the lab screw-up? Yup. Me. Even though I wasn’t working that day, my dumb experiment “put the idea in his head” that our results could be wrong. Got written up. Thanks, AZO. Thanks, stupid curiosity.
So can AZO cause wrong urine test results? Absolutely. Screws up the strips, delays real treatment, and apparently gets you fired. Stupid orange pills.
