Last November/December I started noticing a lot of digestive problems: cramping, fresh blood streaks in my more solid turds, random diarrhea but only small amounts, gas like I just got fracked, etc. I figured at the time it was lactose intolerance coming for me, or gluten issues, or IBS maybe. I have abused my organs quite a bit over the years (“Hey Matt, I dare you to eat that half a hamburger laying in the gutter” “Hey Matt, eat this worm from under the garbage cans” “Hey Matt, bottle of Tullamore Dew?”) and I assumed I had just worn something out and had to eat differently. I cut my diet drastically and made an appointment with Dr. Walkitoff.
He listened to the symptoms, snapped on a rubber glove and made my morning interesting, and proclaimed he thought it was as combination of diet and hemorrhoids but that I should get a colonoscopy. My health insurance company promptly went out of business making that process more complicated than it needed to be. It took a few months to get the appointment made, and in the meantime my intestines got back to regular business, lessening the urgency, as it were. When I finally got the appointment made it wasn’t until late July. Oof. But I wasn’t worried.
Spring sprang and I was my regular self, leaving my offerings every morning without any issue or weirdness. Then in April I started having pretty serious cramping and gas again while in the Southwest. I am a combination hypochondriac/nothing bad can happen type person, so I tried to ignore and eat less like I was on a road trip. Apple-a-day shit and all. Meanwhile when we got back I worked on trying to move the colonoscopy date up to no avail.
In May into June, everything got real fucky. I would wake up in the morning with what I came to describe as “the stabs” with super sharp pains in my lower abdomen and a feeling like I was going to shit the bed. I would hobble to the toilet and have to strain and strain. Have you ever simultaneously felt like you had the worst diarrhea and also were constipated? Such an odd feeling. Anyway (eventually this went from sometimes to every morning) this happened: after some struggle out comes 3-4 tiny hard rabbit turds and a copious amount of blood and mucus. This would be followed later in the day by a normal amount (by volume) of poop of a less-than-ideal consistency. Not a turd, not diarrhea. Also blood but not like that morning problem. I called my doctor’s office again. He retired without warning.
At this point I became alarmed. The pain was bad enough I was starting to think I had a hernia. I got an appointment with the first new PCP I could find that was accepting patients. He poked me and prodded me a bit and said it was not a hernia, but that the colonoscopy coming up would figure it out. Boy howdy did it.
Meanwhile for months now I have been waking up in pain, running to toilets, firing out blood and pebbles. Sometimes multiple times per day, in between the normal drops. Colonoscopy prep was a reprieve! I loved it! Spa day! Fully predictable and painless shitting! Fuck yes!
Yadda yadda they found an ass goblin gotta get a scan blah blah blah metastasis to liver fear loathing pooping blood and getting stabbed from the inside out over and over everything sucks here comes chemo.
Chemo warnings focus a lot on diarrhea. I was expecting diarrhea. I didn’t really get diarrhea. I got what I described above, but instead of once or twice per day, it was 6-7 times per day. Every few hours, while exhausted and out-of-it, I was getting intense pain and had to run to the bathroom to do basically nothing but pop a nosebleed out of my ass and the most pathetic little dook you can think of. Like, a chihuahua turd in a parfait of blood and bile. Made me so mad. On day 3 I did start to get some diarrhea and loperamide knocked that right down. I was resigned to just never having a normal restroom experience again though. Smoothies would help, but it was still not a good experience whenever I went in the bathroom.
Jump ahead a few days to yesterday morning. I woke up feeling more or less normal and felt no pain or urgency or really anything one way or the other. I did have to piss though, because I drink 20oz of water roughly every 2 hours, I also gotta pee a lot at roughly the same frequency 24/7. I get in there, sit down, because I am working on becoming a gentleman and also my urine is toxic and I am trying to minimize and splashing, and oh, ok, it’s poop time! I swear to god it was the first non-weird bowel movement I have had since the equinox! I almost took a picture I was so proud! It was the first good thing that happened to me on a toilet in a very very long time. I was happy for a moment, and then there was mouth sores and other things to remind me to not get cocky.
Well friends, let me tell you, this morning not only did my organs somehow repeat the performance, but this digestive system of mine surpassed itself. I dropped a deuce the size of a ren-faire turkey leg. No pain. No blood. As perfect a turd as has ever been flushed. This thing deserved a birth certificate. I have no idea WTF is going on in there, and I am not deluding myself that this will be a trend during treatment, but I am just so flabbergasted I felt the need to share. You’re welcome.
I also wrote all this so that if anyone reading it experiences anything similar, or just general doodoo weirdness, they can maybe take a lesson to try and get in to ask a medical professional about it ASAP instead of lollygagging around like I did.
You might call this poop a Cautionary Tail.
Happy Thursday!