Early this summer I had some minor surgery to remove a small benign cyst. Although it was an outpatient procedure, my doctor elected to perform it under general rather than local anesthesia. There were no glitches, and I was driven home by one of the nurses at the clinic and put to bed for the rest of the day. I had feelings of nausea for a while, but as I hadn't eaten anything in fifteen hours or so, there was nothing to upchuck, and I drifted off under the influence of my pain medication.
Going under the knife can wreak all sorts of havoc with your bodily functions. I remember a cousin of mine who had severe trapped gas pains for two days following her surgery. Still, I didn't anticipate the effect that brief dose of anesthesia would have on my bowels. Apparently it's quite commonplace to get bunged up following such a procedure. Leading up to the surgery I was sliding them out smooth as silk; but two post-op days passed with no output, despite the fact that I was eating again. By the third day, I was getting worried.
Captain Constipation has rarely blockaded my shit channel with his funky frigate, so I've had very little experience with laxatives. I went to the drugstore and purchased one of those gentler, herbal-type remedies that are supposed to provide non-explosive relief; and I even stuck in a suppository for good measure. Would you believe it? Still no action. By now I definitely had the urge -- I could feel the boulder(s) lurking behind my groin -- but every time I sat on the pot to try and purge myself of what my surgery had wrought, I failed utterly. Just a lot of grunting, rocking back and forth, and empty promises of expulsion.
What I finally resorted to does not provide reading material for the faint of heart. Our veteran PoopReporter and friend Snapper, who is still in the midst of her nurse's training, posted a while back about her first manual disimpaction in the course of duty. That's exactly what it sounds like -- digging into the rectum with the fingers to dislodge the offending offal. This, my friends, is something you want to avoid.
I started the job by stripping down to my birthday suit, sitting on the pot, and forcing the accumulated gravel out of the pit as far as it would go -- which in my case meant about one-fourth of the way. It would not budge any further.
Thus began the gnarly part. I stood in a hovering position over the toilet, pulled at my left ass cheek with my left hand and then carefully inserted my right index finger next to this Mount Rushmore of a merde -- which, at the moment, was only the forehead of one of the four presidents peeking out into the world. I had to penetrate fairly deep to push it forward... and the process hurt. I was trying very hard not to rip or tear any delicate tissue, but the stretching was very uncomfortable. And I'm not being poetic when I liken this surgery-induced monstrosity to Mount Rushmore -- it had formed itself into a series of four large, linked, hard-as-granite chunks.
After much tedious manipulation, each president tumbled out into the water below, and I was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief. There was a pinkish tinge to the water surrounding the drop zone.
As might be imagined, this was a completely wipeless turd -- but this is not a recommended technique to achieve such a milestone. Thankfully, once I had expelled that medical oddity, my system returned to normal.
We tend to take our everyday elimination patterns for granted. As a veteran PoopReporter and now after this recent bout with a demon of a drugged doodie, I know not to be so cavalier. Fellow poopers, please just take my word for it that healthy bowels are a wonderful thing -- may you stay out of hospitals, so as to not have to come to this conclusion through your own experience.
-- The Big Wiper