Will poop for painkillers

When I was a kid I knew that telling my mom that there was something wrong with me was always going to get the same reaction from from her. It didn't matter what the complaint was - stomach ache, headache, nosebleed, ear infection - the response was static. She would lean in close, get a serious look on her face and in a low voice ask "Do you have to go to the bathroom?"

I don't why this was her go-to question. Maybe it's something she heard as a kid*. Maybe she once had an ear infection caused by constipation and she was worried that someday the same thing would happen to me. All I know is that I was asked this same question well beyond the age when anyone should have been asking me that. When I was in middle school I brought home a note from the school nurse stating that I had scoliosis and needed to be seen by a doctor. My mother read that note, eyed me suspiciously and then said "Do you need to go to the ba-"

"No!" I cut her off. "I've pretty much got a handle on this toileting thing now and anyway I'm pretty sure no one has ever been so plugged up that it caused their spine to curve."

Once I grew up and got married I figured I would never again be asked about my bowel movements. Especially since I married a man that thought I never pooped. Once, few months into our marriage I went into the bathroom to do what you do in the bathroom and I guess I was in there a little too long. After a couple of minutes Jesse came knocking on the door to see if I was all right. I wish I was exaggerating. I don't know if her knew before that day that everybody poops.

When I recently went to the ER because my post-op pain was so bad I got an x-ray to check and make sure nothing was amiss internally. The doctor reviewed it and then came to talk to me. "Well" he said with a very serious look on his face "There's some stool visible in the x-ray."

I considered pointing out to him that wasn't possible since I was laying on a table when they took the x-ray and not sitting on a stool. Before the words could make their way out of my mouth though I realized he was talking about the other kind of stool. (Is there a grosser euphemism for "poop" than "stool"? I think not.) "We'll give you more painkillers" he promised "but first we're going to give you an enema."

I felt like I was a kid again. Was my mother working in the ER? Certainly they were not suggesting that I was in the much pain because I had to poop. They couldn't think I was that out of touch my body, right? I mean, I knew that the pain I was feeling was less a "I have to poop" pain and more of a "someone made four incisions into my body and cut part of me out" pain. But the lure of more painkillers made me agree to the enema.

A little while later a woman in lime green scrubs and cat's eye glasses wandered into the room. She had the device in her hands. "Roll on your side" she said brightly "and we'll get this thing going!"

I'll spare you the details of what happened next. I will tell you though that at one point she patted my shoulder and said "You're doing just great!" I thought about saying that my ability to get an enema was one of the first things my husband liked about me when we met but then I worried that she would think I was serious and then she might think weird things about me and I didn't really feel like taking the time to explain that it was all just a joke. After she was done she left with the instructions to hold it as long as I could but to roll from side to side as much as I could. Since rolling back and forth hurt so much Jesse came and stood by my bed to help me. He helped me roll my bloated, sloshing body to one side and then would count down the seconds until it was time to roll back the other way. That man must really love me.

Fifteen minutes later I shuffled across the hall into the bathroom to do what you do when you have an enema. Jesse wanted to come in with me but I believe that the secret to a good marriage is a little mystery so I made him wait in the hall. When all was said and done I didn't feel any better. In fact I felt much worse but at least then I got another shot of painkiller.

After the enema failed to make me feel any better the doctor threw up his hands and said "You shouldn't be having this much pain! You might as well go home because there's nothing else we can do for you!" (Yes, that's really what he said.) The hospital's mission statement is "We improve the health and quality of life for the people we serve in a manner that reflects the healing mission of Jesus." I think they should change it to "Jesus! That's a lot of stool you've got there! We'll help you poop it out but if that doesn't work then we're fresh out of ideas."

I left the hospital that day a little wiser, a little emptier and a lot more certain that if I ever again have to go the ER, I'm going to poop at home first.

*I'm betting this is the cause. There seems to be a family history of poop fascination. When I was a kid I loved to look through my grandma's recipe box. Stuck right there in the middle of recipes for Glorified Rice and Jell-O Salad was a recipe marked "diarrhea". Every time I would find it I would laugh and laugh and laugh. My grandma would always get mad and yell "It's not a recipe for diarrhea! It's a cure for it!" but I wouldn't care because when you're ten years old there's nothing funnier than finding the word "diarrhea" in an old lady's recipe box.