Quarter Mile of Shit
Five months after my transplant I was FUCKED UP. My organs were confused as to what they were supposed to do. My kidneys had become stupid, my lungs decided to collect microscopic organisms, my gallbladder went into hibernation, and my intestines were involved in the most extreme bowel transition ever.
It all started when my hospital made an error, which resulted in a pooping incident never before seen in human history. When it was over, it took an entire day for me to re-hydrate from all the fluid I’d lost to the toilet. After that I decided I wasn’t going to shit again for the rest of my life.
This resolution lasted two weeks, which turns out to be an insanely long time to go without defecating. The next week I had mild, constant abdominal pain on my left side, which I thought was a strained muscle. My doctor ordered me an X-ray and the picture wasn’t pretty. I had a massive collection of excrement.
MASSIVE.
“I have a quarter-mile back-up of shit,” I told people.
Over the next two weeks I ingested every laxative and stool softener ever created, including a couple suppositories. When I shoved the capsule up my ass I closed my eyes, as if that would make any difference. Finally, the medicine pushed the shit through the winding corridors of my bowels—slowly, painfully, grotesquely. It felt like a small eruption took place in my upper bowel and pushed everything nanometers at a time. Over and over and over again. Through the course of frequent and long shit-capades spanning three days, I cleaned house.
I must have overdosed on laxatives because I had crazy diarrhea the next week. As if things couldn’t get worse,
Hurricane Isabel ripped through Virginia one of the nights. We lost power, and some news stations predicted certain areas wouldn’t get it back for a few days.
This left me with two problems. First, what the hell would I do without electricity?
No TV, PlayStation or movies. What am I going to do—read? I’m not even sure if I know how anymore.
And more importantly, since my house uses well water, each of our three toilets could only be flushed once. But I was shitting several times each day, not to mention all the courtesy flushes.
I refuse to take a shit in a toilet that already has shit in it.
My mom thought of one solution. She started calling everyone she knew in our neighborhood to see if they had water. “We need to transport buckets of water for Benjamin,” she said.
“What does he need water for?” my neighbors asked.
“Well…he poops a lot and needs water to flush.”
Fortunately, our power came back and no buckets of water were needed.
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