The Burden of Poo...and Other Problems of IBS

I am going on vacation in four weeks and part of me is terrified.

Not only am I meeting people in person that I had only known on paper for several years, but I am also staying with them and so the inevitable dilemma ensues. One of the most embarrassing things to contemplate about staying with friends is the prospect of backing up their toilet with an unexpected, yet unavoidable IBS attack. There’s the tell-tale subterranean gurgle which lets you know that something wicked this way comes, along with the debilitating cramps and terrifying urgency to find the nearest bathroom.

As a long-time IBS sufferer I have had the misfortune to back-up the normal working order of many a toilet bowl, from a brand new Barnes & Noble bookstore to a BJ’s Wholesale Club, a library in New Orleans a week before hurricane Katrina, Pawley’s Island in Myrtle Beach, a four star hotel in Rome, Italy, my place of business (no pun intended), the movie theater at Phipps Plaza, Wal-Mart, but probably most traumatizing of all, the toilet of a male pen pal who paid for me to visit him in Ireland for my 32nd birthday.

I was staying at his house which was an attached duplex next door to his parents. I made the mistake of having a cheesy pizza on the second floor of Flannigan’s and following it up with some sort of cream pie and three cups of coffee…the perfect storm for an epic attack of slithery stool. I suffered gut wrenching pains as I tried to stay casually interested in the sights of Dublin from atop a double-decker tour bus and then the DART train to his house. I could barely walk up the driveway to the house without fearing my bowels would involuntarily expel a brown drizzle of chocolate mousse. I took the stairs two at a time and locked the door behind me and commenced to suffer the breakout of sweat on my brow, the contortion of cramps, the spasmodic clenching of sphincter muscles and finally the fits and spurts of the attack itself. It seemed to go on for hours and just when I thought it was time to do the paperwork and take my leave, a new onslaught of pain and suffering and mushy, pasty poo would ensue. This cycle repeated itself several times and I was alarmed because the toilets in Ireland don’t have as much water in them as those in the states, and I realized that all the water in the bowl had been absorbed by the swirling mass of toxic waste which was the end result (again, no pun intended) of too much cheese, cream and caffeine. After using what seemed like a whole roll of toilet paper to erase any trace of my painful ordeal I stood up, rearranged myself and looked down at the environmental hazard I had created. I was repulsed and checked under the sink for glade or any other odor masking agent and was stymied to find that men, unlike women, are accustomed to the smell of their own foul bodily functions and feel no particular obligation to obliterate them for the comfort of others. I opened the window and frantically fanned the pungent clouds of unholy odor with a hand towel, washed my hands with the thoroughness of a scientist in level 4 bio-hazmat conditions and thankfully pushed the lever to flush the toilet…only nothing happened! I pushed the lever again and held it down and there was nothing but the fitful sound of the inner workings of a foreign toilet that would not flush. I was claustrophobic with fear. I felt encapsulated in this tiny bathroom and planned to never come out until my plane left 5 days later. Even then I would climb out the window and shimmy down the ivy covered trellis to avoid the embarrassment of having my male host see what I had done. I could think of no other recourse but to cover the mess with more toilet paper and then casually mention that the toilet would not flush.

Needless to say the rest of my trip did not go well. He was strangely distant and uncommunicative and I spent most of my time conversing with his lovely parents. I made a point to never use their toilet as they were the only ones still treating me civilly. It has been almost 6 years since this most humiliating incident and to this day I wonder if it was the mountain of poo I left for him to clean up that ruined our relationship. Who can say? I only know that the prospect of traveling to the UK to visit friends for 10 days has me in a quivery quagmire over how to avoid the inevitable bowel eruption. After all, it would not do to have a repeat of the time I ate too much lasagna at Myrtle Beach and did my own impression of Elvis Presley’s final moments where I passed out from the pain, banged my head against the wall on the way down, and lay sprawled with my pants down around my ankles only to be awakened by a little girl who had crawled under the stall and announced to her mommy that a lady died on the floor. My only plan of attack would be to avoid the following items:

-Cheese
-Chocolate
-Caramel
-Caffeine
-Coffee
-Cereal
-Cake
-Green peppers
-Ice cream
-Milk
-Pudding
-Bananas
-Vodka
-Pizza
-Pie

This condition continues to be a glaring social problem that should be further addressed in after school specials and Lifetime movies so that the stigma of IBS can be erased. In the meantime I can only hope that my British friends are a forgiving bunch and that a few explosions here and there will not affect our friendship.

Deathbed Confessions are Lame

Someone I used to know only sends me "forwards" with never a personal message, but only these cheesy, emotionally manipulative emails that are supposed to make me believe that if I just stop what I'm doing and recite a few lines on the email...I, too, can be saved. Which is ironic considering we were both baptized in the same church. I wonder what makes him think I'm going to hell again all of a sudden? Anyway, he sends me this hideously graphic collage of photos from the 9/11 attacks where God is supposedly talking to each person, trying to get the frightened, the choking, the burning, the dying people to "come to Jesus" just before they die. I think this is a terrible thing to tell people. If you lived with a man your whole life and treated him like crap and never got him anything for his birthday or even noticed he was around and just stepped over him on your way to and from work, but you proclaimed your undying love for him on your deathbed...one would have to either question your motives or your sanity, at the very least, your veracity. I would think this poor man who's shared your life for decades would know you as the pretender you are and just reach over you, gently, as though to give you a final kiss, but instead pull the plug out of the wall so that you flatline alone and miserable...I think that's fair, don't you???

Deathbed confessions are lame, people. Tell the people in your life how you feel about them now while it still matters, while it doesn't cost you anything, while it still makes sense that they'd believe you. Don't be a deathbed chump.

Obama Drama

I'm pretty sure that one of Nostradamus' signs of the apocalypse was the nomination of Barak Obama for President. As the most liberal democrat in the senate he is a danger to America, especially with a democratic congress to do his bidding. I have no problem with a black president. I would have voted for Colin Powell with a clear conscience. I just cannot state strongly enough how much I fear an ultra-liberal president being the most powerful man in the world. If he beats McCain in November (after a long and protracted election where Obama will claw for every individual vote) we can look forward to bolder terrorist attacks, insidious socialism, escalating taxes, a glut of social reform projects which have no hope of social reform, an increased welfare state, continuous legislating from the bench, the complete erosion of moral responsibility and the end of free thinking as everyone who disagrees with his agenda or those of his ilk find themselves the targets of malicious prosecution. A vote for Obama is a vote for an America we won't recognize in four years. Wake up and smell the Starbucks, people, or we will all be a bunch of French speaking, limp-wristed, surrender monkeys by 2012!

Teddy Under the Knife

The Tedster, drinker extraordinaire, killer of women, liberal lush is going under the knife for a brain tumor today. Does anyone else think this is an absolute waste of time? He's an old drunk with a pickled liver who has done more damage to this country than those chips that cause uncontrollable anal leakage. Let the old bastard rot, I mean, rest in peace already and not waste the time and talents of the doctors of Duke on a singularly corrosive human being. If they are going in there anyway, they might as well cut out the part of the brain that makes him such a douche-bag. The United States will be a better place once the Kennedys no longer have a strangle hold on the northeast. First we get rid of the caustic Kennedys, then move on to those nasty Clintons. Let the housecleaning begin!

DUDE, WHERE'S MY BLOG?

I admit that I don't check my blog as often as is in vogue these days, but I never expected my blog to be hi-jacked by a stranger. I did not know you could have the same blog name as someone else and apparently my blog was overwritten by a stranger. I guess I will have to work on a more interesting name for my blog and hope that doesn't somehow get hi-jacked too.

Feeling very violated right now...

Perversity Thy Name is Diversity...

I just returned from a conference in Denver, Colorado where we discussed the "state of our union" over the last year and I was amazed at the depth of my anger when a tall, lanky, pale, older man stood up and stated in a voice tremulous with insecure self-righteousness "we need more racial diversity" and then sat back down apparently pleased with himself.

Being a white, thirty-something female might make some wonder why I was so angry. I wondered myself until I looked around the group of people I had been working with over the last two years. There were men and women of all ages and shapes and sizes and colors, and while we were certainly no gathering of the UN, we were already a diverse group drawn together in a common goal and mission, a group of passionate people, passionate about our work and I found myself boiling at the knee-jerk assumption perpetrated by our politically correct climate of hate and fear cloaked in liberal doublespeak that if there aren't the "correct" number of this race or that sexual orientation then whatever endeavor any group spends its days and nights perfecting is inherently flawed.

I do not believe that there should be any barriers to entry in any work field or study for anyone willing to do the work honestly and passionately, but I am opposed to watchdogs coming in and deciding who should work where so that it looks better, that it fits some abstract notion that is currently the rage. Bryant Gumbel and his ludicrous grumblings about the "paucity" of blacks in Winter Olympic Sports being why he won't watch them is more of the same. Travel sometime to Minnesota and Alberta and Switzerland and all other cold weather cities and regions where winter sports are practiced and played and you will see that a large majority of black people do not live in those regions. Should we force black people to take up skiing and curling and snowboarding, etc. just so it looks better? Black people are not being turned away from winter sports, it's just more accurate to say that the overwhelming majority prefer summer sports and there's nothing inherently wrong or racially biased about the Winter Sports because of it and the Summer Sports are no more noble because they are more racially diverse.

Diversity for diversity's sake is no way to build bridges or strengthen business. Never in the history of human endeavor will you ever see a group of people walk into any organization and say there's something wrong with it because there are not enough white people in it. I should not be made to feel guilty or ashamed for being born white as I do not condone any person for any reason to be passed over for a position because of race, color or religion. And yet no one ever turned down a position because it was given to them to fulfill a quota. What kind of person wants to get ahead in life by ill-conceived mandates and not by honest to goodness hard work?

In spite of all this there still remains a good ole boy's network which favors friends and family and cronies above qualification and yet a bias for is not necessarily a bias against. Hiring employees is not just about a resume, it's about personality, how the individual fits in the group. One department's "bad fit" is another department's "bias" and the fact is that there is always a bias towards one thing or another and the fact that one person is chosen over another is not a rejection of race or creed but a choice to find the best person to fit the existing group. Why is it when I am not hired for a position it's because I was not a good fit and yet when a black person doesn't get the position it's because that corporation is against black people in general?

Winter Sports and corporate boardrooms are not going to become more successful because more black people enter them. Until we quit trying to force the world to fit into a politically corrupt snapshot of what diversity looks like we will never be free. Yelling that something is diverse doesn't make it so and forcing something to be diverse doesn't make it so. True diversity will come when no one talks about it anymore, when everyone is working and no one is wondering if this or that group or organization has the requisite amount of colors or shapes or religions. Trying to enforce morality in this country continues to fail and the fanatics who cry for diversity for diversity sake unfortunately have the loudest voices. I suppose there's a reason why the voice of God is in a whisper and not in a windstorm. It is in the still, quiet voice that wisdom lives.

HMO-o-o-h!

HMOs have become a mixed blessing. Say what you want to about the vagaries and corruptness of Corporate America, but they do seem to be best way to get affordable healthcare...but that's only step one. Nevermind that the cost goes up each year, but the level of care remains the same and the cost of drugs continues to go up exponentially, yet the ingredients don't change. My 15 minutes with my primary care physician is invariably preceded by an hour's wait in the wating room and that's if I'm there on time. Then I get into the exam room and wait another 30 minutes for the doctor to arrive and then it's only a nurse to take my vitals and tell me the doctor will be with me "soon". How much sooner can he be after being an hour and a half late already? My symptoms are cataloged with the compassion and interest of a Burger King cashier and without further ado a prescription or two or three is written on my behalf and I'm quickly ushered down the hall to checkout feeling screwed without having been kissed. I have the sense that I have just completed a sordid transaction with a drug dealer, but on a much nicer street corner.

Even with the lack of bedside manner, the waiting and the hurried consultation, you certainly cannot beat a $20.00 co-pay. If I am fair, I have to admit that I have been reduced to a number in all other areas of my life, why should I be surprised that the medical community would be any different?