I've been absent from PoopReport for over a month now. It hasn't been a purposeful absence. But it has been an absence of unfortunate dramatic proportion due to a nasty little viral pneumonia bug that's floated around the vicinity of Ft. Lewis like a desperate single-scene malcontent at closing time – persistent, undeterrable, and with no intention of leaving alone.

Ugh.

Mr. Kurt, my husband, came home from Japan almost two months ago and brought with him a flu-like sickness that affected everyone in our household except for Thomas, my oldest child. My husband, my daughter, and I have all contracted whatever he brought us over a three week period I will forever remember as “that one time we all got sick in Yelm that one Spring.” We were hacking up phlegmballs and coughing for weeks. It sucked. But, upon our recovery last month, I thought the worst was over.

I was wrong.

In the first week in March, I got sick again; but this time, it was not just the flu. It was more than that. It was a merciless assault of every type of flu-like symptom that I have ever before experienced, accompanied by extreme fatigue, all at once. I've since come to find that we had all contracted pneumonia.

The days went in and out of my life with no particular bang. Today, my dog's nails are too long because I haven't been able to cut them. I have this itch to siphon at least forty percent of the water out of the fish tanks lest the fish decide to strike because of intolerable swimming conditions. My shower is beginning to wink at me. I have a long road of cleaning and recovery ahead of me.

And, apparently, so does my lower colon.

For the past three weeks I have not had the usual happy, vegetarian poops I am accustomed to. My poops have been laborious, hard, and not at all spongy or floaty. I feel none of the relief from having a dook that I used to. I am only tired. I am happy to just shove one out and get back either on the couch or in my bed.

From this new development, then, I wonder: how do the other members of our pooper's forum -- the ones who either have health problems, or the ones who have been the victim of some type of temporary illness – how do you feel when your poop deserts you? Just how important is it to have a good, satisfying shit? Just how important is it for one to get a really good, solid dook shoved out at least once a day? Does it affect one's ability to exist comfortably if this often taken-for-granted action is suddenly removed from one's daily ablutions?

What do you all think? Is it mentally and emotionally imperative to have a decent shit on a regular basis? And if so, why? And, if not, why?

I'm an inquiring mind, and I want to know.

-- Daphne [1]