Some poop stories are funny. We read them and laugh aloud at the antics of our bodily functions. Others are embarrassing. While still funny, we cringe along with the author as we laugh at them. And some poop stories are merely tragic.
This is a tragic poop story.
About halfway through my senior year of high school, I went completely nuts. I was already crazy -- I had been seeing different counselors and shrinks off and on, I had even been in a group stress center, and I had been on more anti-depressants and anti-psychotics than I care to think of -- but for some reason, on this fateful Saturday night in February, I decided it was a great idea to take as many Ibuprofen tablets as I could. Just swallowing them without water, I managed to get down about seventy-five before the police got there (I had told a friend of mine goodbye and he called the cops). Just to be difficult, I refused to make myself throw them all up. I wanted to damage my liver and die in excruciating pain because, as I said, I was nuts.
So the ambulance was called, I was loaded in, and on the fifteen minute ride to the emergency room the EMT gave me two options -- I could have a tube rammed down my throat and get my stomach pumped when I got there, or I could drink his little bottle o' fun: activated charcoal.
Now, I don't know how many of you have known the joys of a stomach full of pills, but it isn't as fun as one would think. Even if they aren't doing much yet, the mere fact that you have swallowed so many little coated tablets is enough to make you feel sick to your stomach. Add in a bumpy ambulance and the most foul thing I have ever had to let pass through my lips (and I once dated a man who was like Rodney Dangerfield, except with a mullet, earrings, and not as cool), and things go downhill quickly. Imagine making a smoothie out of a cat litter box filter and you pretty well get the picture. It was so disgusting that four years later I still want to yack when I think about the taste. Looking back, and knowing the results that followed, I think I should have gone with the stomach-pumping.
After gagging down the Bottle of Liquified Hell, we arrived at the ER. I was taken to a bed, given some Phenergan through an IV to keep me from projectile vomiting (my stomach was doing more than flips -- it was performing a damn floor routine), and then given some Benadryl when I reacted badly and started to convulse a little. All seemed well on the stomach-front for a while. I drifted in and out of consciousness for a couple of hours until suddenly IT hit me. In the intestinal tract.
I told my mother, who was sitting with me, that I needed to go. Right now. We called frantically for a nurse, and one came just in time -- with a bedpan and a portable seat. For those of you who have never seen what I mean, it is a toilet seat on metal bars with handles. A flimsy plastic bedpan slides underneath. My bowels began to quiver with more than poo; I just KNEW that I was going to blast the pan off and across the room with the force of my black rectal tidal wave.
But I didn't. My story doesn't end that easily.
I had arrived at the hospital probably around two AM Sunday morning. Around eight they decided to move me to a different hospital that had room in its psych wing (I had voluntarily committed myself -- under the influence of lots of happy medication, mind you). Another ambulance, little sleep, and a gimpy stomach made the half hour ride less-than-pleasant. We arrived, we started to fill out paperwork, and suddenly IT hit me again. Hard. I turned to the ambulance driver and told him I had to go NOW. So he escorted me to the bathroom. I flew through the door and lo and behold, ALL OF THE STALLS WERE TAKEN!!! Can you believe it?
I'm sure you can see where this is going.
I stood dancing back and forth, my cheeks pressed together tighter than a librarian's thighs, praying to God, Lucifer, Jesus, Satan, anyone I thought could potentially be listening, to please! Please! let me hear a flush!
And then the sweetest sound in the world: the Big Porcelain Gurgle.
The handicapped stall door opened and a middle-aged woman stepped out. Taking her sweet-assed time about it, too. I don't think I have ever felt such intense hatred for a person. I flashed her a cadaver's grin, rushed past her into the stall, and locked it. Just as the bar slid into place, a hot torrent of black diarrhea slid into my favorite plaid pants. Well, they were my favorite until then, at least.
But I felt more coming on. I waddled as quickly as I could to the can, dropped my desecrated drawers, and felt a gush of liquid horror pour from my rectum. The smell was horrible, like the turd you might expect from a locomotive. But just as my colon began to calm down, my stomach betrayed me as well. I flushed, knelt down as quickly as I could, and hurled as I have never hurled before or since. And you know what? My vomit and shit looked exactly the same: black as tar, with little brownish pieces of Ibuprofen tablets mixed in as an added bonus. I alternated between crapping my intestines out and puking my guts out a few more times; and finally, feeling physically drained, I was left staring at my ruin of a thong and pants.
What could I do? I was sick as hell, the gown I was wearing instead of a shirt opened in the back, and I didn't want to run around without undies just in case we had a repeat episode. Shitting one's pants is one thing, but shitting without one's pants and covering the floor with foul black poo is another. I tried in vain to scoop it out, but it wasn't solid enough. I tried to dump it into the pot, but it was too sticky.
After a good twenty minutes the (male) ambulance driver came a' knockin' to make sure I was okay. I was humiliated and I wanted my mom. But nope, he wanted to get a female orderly. So I ended up spending the rest of that day wearing excruciatingly uncomfortable gauze underwear (basically a ring of gauze with a little part sewn together to kind of form a crotch). And I didn't even get any good medication until the next day.
But I think my mother got the worst end of it. She got to drive the forty-five minutes home with my pants in a plastic bag.
