Things That Make You Go, “Woo!”
(or: A Tale From The Back Side)
(Note: this post is cross-posted from the Barscape forum. FW = FeldWife and mF = miniFeld, my son)
On June 7th, 2007, I was ravaged by a bout of colitis which required a trip to the Winchester Hospital Emergency Room.
It started at 3:30am when I woke up from a sound sleep to severe abdominal cramps. I knew immediately that I was in for a bout of diarrhea and thought of the Baked Potato soup from Panera that I’d had the previous afternoon. Every now and then, cream-based soups get me and the soup that I’d had at lunch didn’t taste the way it usually does.
No matter, I thought. I’ll just get through the unpleasantness and go back to sleep. Or so I thought. Nothing would pass. I had severe dry mouth and was probably dehydrated. For the next hour and a half, I got hit by waves and waves of prayer-inducing gas bloat and pain. Finally, at 5am, whoosh!
Oh, the relief! Or so I thought again. I had to go again right after. Then again, right after. Only this time, there was blood in the toilet. That ain’t right.
I hoped in vain that it would stop. It wouldn’t. At 6am, I went upstairs and told FW that we probably had to go to the hospital. I wasn’t passing a lot, but it was enough. After a few more trips to the bathroom as FW and mF got up and got ready, FW and I tried to figure out our options.
Our doctor is affiliated with Winchester Hospital, but the hospital is a bit of a drive south of here. They have a walk-in clinic near miniFeld’s school and they have ER facilities. We considered 911, but I wasn’t in any danger of bleeding out and we still had to get miniFeld to school. We eventually decided to head to the clinic first, drop me off, then she would drop miniFeld off at school. Meanwhile, the time between bathroom trips was lengthening and I hoped that it would all just go away. As I surfed the web to get information about Winchester Hospital’s clinic to see if they had the proper facilities, I posted my note here.
We left and headed to the clinic. On the way, something happened which told me that I was going to live. At the first major intersection, a truck ran the red light a few seconds after our light turned green. FW had actually hit the gas to go, but for some reason, she wasn’t in gear. If it had been in gear, as it is nearly 100% of the time, that truck would have T-boned us.
We decided mid-trip that the clinic probably wouldn’t have the facilities I needed, so we dropped miniFeld off at school early, luckily his teacher was there, and drove to the hospital.
We, of course, hit rush hour traffic, which sucks when you need to be near a bathroom. As the traffic thickened, I state, “Route 129 has a BK.” 129 was the next exit. We took that and got stuck in a 15-car line waiting to get off the off-ramp. Frell.
I then entered a zen-like state to keep my bodily functions in check while FW negotiated the line. We made it to the BK and I rushed in, but it was a false alarm. Another hopeful sign.
We made it to Winchester Hospital’s ER soon after and I was triaged and admitted.
The first of many observations occurred here as I tried to explain my problem to the admitting nurse. I discovered that nothing evokes facial sympathy like the phrase “rectal bleeding”.
I also discovered, as I lay on a gurney in ER Room 3, in between bouts of rectal bleeding, that I had little sympathy for Paris Hilton and her “medical reasons”.
I had the first of two rectal exams in ER Room 3. The doctor was very polite and almost apologetic.
Doc: “You know I have to give you a rectal exam.”
Me: “I kinda figured.”
I will say this. It wasn’t as unpleasant as I had feared. I would still rather pitch than catch, though. Unless, I can bag a handsome doctor. Then I’d be set for life. Actually, he wouldn’t even have to be handsome. It’s not like I’d have to look at him.
Throughout my stay, the hospital staff were top-notch. Very polite, very friendly and a pleasure to joke around with. At one point, one of the ER techs led me to the bathroom b/c I had to leave a stool sample. He gave me the container and told me what I had to do. After few minutes I did my end of the job and left the container on the bathroom floor, I had to go to the bathroom again. He met me on the way and apologized for getting sidetracked.
Me: “So you have what you need?”
Tech: “Yeah.”
Me: “So I can go freelance now?”
Tech: “Yeah.” 
They put me on an IV in the ER and I was hooked up throughout my stay. Because a colonoscopy was probably in my future, I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything.
At about 1pm, they admitted me and brought me up to my room. A couple of hours later, I met Dr. Lee, who would be doing the colonoscopy. He, too, gave me a rectal exam as he explained the colonoscopy procedure. At 5pm, I began the prep work, which involved drinking a gallon of a product called GoLightly. I had 7 hours to do so.
Now, GoLightly has to be the most misnamed product ever conceived. It should be called GoGeyser or GoLikeYouNeverThoughtPossible. GoLightly is designed to clean out your digestive tract prior to a colonoscopy. The patient has to drink a gallon of this awful tasting liquid, think bubbleless seltzer with salt added, until they crap nothing but clear liquid. Luckily, I had little to nothing in my system, so it only took about 3 or so quarts to get the desired result. Still, I had to resort to taking cups into the bathroom with me and chugging while I was flushing my system because I was spending so much time in there. At one point, I wondered why the tv was on, because I only watched about 5 minutes of it during a one hour period.
The weird thing is that I kept thinking of Audrey Hepburn throughout the whole ordeal.
The GoLightly phase was the most difficult of my stay. During that time, I soiled myself three times because I lost the ability to control my functions. The first time occurred because, for some reason, someone had decided to take an EKG in the middle of my numerous frenzied trips to the bathroom. So, while I was sitting in bed waiting for the nurse to untangle the coil of wires from each other, I was overcome by another desire to purge and didn’t make the bathroom. It was the first and only time throughout my ordeal that I lost my temper. What sadistic dumbass would schedule an EKG then of all times? The nurse was very understanding of my situation, though, and helped me out and all was well afterward.
The last time occurred while I was sitting in bed late Friday recovering. For the first time in over a day, I passed some gas. Later, I realized from the evidence that that fart wasn’t as pure as I thought. And that’s one of the very few times you’ll see the words fart and pure in the same sentence.
I learned many things about myself during the GoLightly phase. I learned about plumbing. The toilet in my room had a strange spout attached to the incoming water pipe. It had a long arm which could fold down like a slot machine. I thought that perhaps it was some kind of hygienic purpose, but the spout faced down instead of up. So, I just kept it up and out of the way. Well, during one of my frenzied GoLightly trips, I rushed in, dropped my johnny and squatted down quickly.
“Woo!”
“What the fuck?!”
The one-arm bandit spout was down over the bowl and I had hunkered myself over the cold metal rounded head. Evidentally, the nurses used the spouts to clean out the “hat” and the last nurse had left the spout down.
“Hat”?
Throughout my stay, I did not excrete directly into the toilet. Instead, I was given a handled plastic jug to urinate into and a plastic toilet insert to defecate into. The toilet insert resembled an upside down cowboy hat and I overheard one of the nurses call it as such.
Knowing this now, the phrase “crap in a hat” has a new meaning for me.
So does, “bloody hell”.
Another thing that I learned during that phase is that if I ever lose my right hand, I’ll be able to survive using my left hand. Because the IV catheter was in my right elbow and was hooked up to a pump, if I bent my elbow, the pump would complain, stop and beep repeatedly, requiring a nurse to come in and reset the pump. It was annoying for everyone involved, but I did not want to be stuck again in the arm. So, I made due with my left hand. I fed myself, eventually, and I was able to wipe myself. I had lots of practice.
Thankfully, the GoLightly phase ended early and I did not have to drink the whole gallon. As I said, I’d had little in my system to begin with and I was soon passing only blood and GoLightly. This was most merciful b/c I was so thoroughly tired by this point that I was very near my breaking point. See, I had stayed up the night before and had gone to bed at 1:30am. When the diarrhea bout hit at 3:30am, I’d had only two hours of sleep. Now, at 10:30pm, after 117 trips to the bathroom, lots of purging, drinking three quarts of that nasty swill, I was well approaching my limit. Still, it took another hour or so for the last of the GoLightly to leave my system before sleep came.
Sleeping in a hospital is not easy. For one thing, I was woken at 4am by the nurse taking my vital signs. Then, at 5am, I was woken by the nurse who took blood from me. Having an issue with needles before, I never thought I could care less about blood being taken from me.
Nurse: “I’m here to take your blood.”
Me: “Ok.”
Me (mentally): “Whatever.”
The worst inhibitor to my sleep, however, was my new roommate. At midnight, Sean was admitted and occupied the empty bed next to me. He was in worse shape than I was. Whereas I was passing blood, he was passing nothing. He was on morphine for the pain. As a roommate, he was a great guy, very amiable. However, he snored like a bear with a head cold.
Good God! I have never heard snoring like this. It was both nasal and oral. He whistled. He flapped his lips. And he slept often.
In spite of all this, though, I did get some sleep.
In spite of the previous day’s experiences and the impending colonoscopy and the lack of solid sleep, I woke up Friday with an erection. Never underestimate the latent power of morning wood. Thinking back on it though, it’s not surprising. The bed had a wired controller that served as the tv remote control, tv speaker and had the nurse call button. It had been resting on my thigh when I went to sleep that night and had shifted against me. So, nestling against me was a device that controlled the television and could summon a woman who would serve my needs. The erection was inevitable.
Because I had flushed out my system relatively early the night before, I was among the first patients in the GI suite. The nurse who admitted me there was very friendly and comforting.
Nurse: “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
Me: “Literally.”
Nurse:
They gave me two drugs for the colonoscopy. The first was in the valium family, the second was a narcotic. The idea was for me to be lucid, but I wouldn’t have any memory of the pain. I wound up sleeping through most of it. I did wake up at the word “polyp” and saw my colon on the tv screen in front of me. I also saw the inflammation that was the colitis. There was some pain, I think when they were pushing through the inflamed area, but I have no memory of what it felt like. I do remember the view when they pulled the camera out of my ass. It was like watching the launch of a Viper from the Battlestar Buttcrack.
Following the procedure, I was in the GI suite recovering from the drugs. While I was there, the nurse showed me a book of the pictures taken from my insides, all with labels like “anus”, “sigmoid” and the like. While perusing the photos, I think I saw the pic I’m going to use for this year’s Christmas cards.
“From one asshole to another. Merry Christmas!”
Once I was back up in my room, I began to feel much better. The nurse who was on duty during the GoLightly phase told me that one of the beneficial side effects of the GoLightly was that flushing out my system would probably get rid of whatever was inflaming my colon. I was put on a clear liquid diet, which included broth, apple juice, popsicles, sherbet and the like. After over a day of not eating anything, it was heaven.
From that point, I steadily improved. I tried to get word out to Fartacus to avoid the worry that was sure to ensue after my warning post, but out-of-state calls were not automatically put through. I tried to bill my home number, but FW was on the phone trying to call me and/or talking to Gary.
I was kept overnight on Friday because I was still passing blood, but in minute amounts. By Saturday, I was able to take a shower and, for lunch, I was upped to a full menu. It was the best meal I’ve ever had. I cleaned my plate. Now that I could keep a full meal down, I was discharged.
I’m still tired and achy, and I’m careful with my diet, but all getting more and more normal.
Whew…
One last note…
When I was laying on the gurney in ER Room 3, FW looked at me and was amazed at how calm I seemed. I was talking easily with the ER staff and seemed so easygoing.
FW: “How can you be so calm through all of this?”
Me (voice cracking): “I gave it all to God.”
FW: “So you’re not so calm after all.”
Me: 
“Giving it all to God” is a phrase that borders on jargon among Christians of various sects. All it means is that you submit to the unknown. You reach a point where nothing is in your control and so you just surrender to the outcome, relying on faith that everything will turn out the way it should.
For some, including atheists of varying stripes, that surrender manifests itself as a reliance on technology, or on the education of the hospital staff. For me, it is the knowledge that my Creator is going to take care of me, that this ordeal will make me a better person somehow, and that facing ones fears help us to grow.
They found two polyps, the ticking time bomb of colon cancer. Knowing me the way I do, I wasn’t going to go for a colonoscopy or do any of that shit voluntarily. So, I caught a mild virus, perhaps from the soup, perhaps from drinking the filtered stream water during the Kinsman hike. A friend of mine said that that should teach me to drink bear piss from a stream. My lesson is far simpler. Not everything that seems bad, is.
The most beautiful flower in the world will grow stronger after you dump shit on it.
The end.