Monthly Archives: January 2020

Don’t Trust the Farts

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(Warning: TMI)

My GI system and I have a love-hate relationship. I love food, my GI system hates me for it. It makes it’s displeasure known by unwelcome diarrhea, and extreme flatulence. One of the first experiences as a dating couple was me accidentally farting in Log’s face. (It was mortifying and it is still brought up in discussion to this day.) The fact that he is still with me after such a heinous act is a true testament of this man’s devotion to me.

Later last year, after a bout of what I can call violent diarrhea after a God knows what, I discovered a pea-sized unwanted guest on my starfish. Small, hard, angry. And because I work in Oncology, and everything is cancer now, I naturally assumed the worst. Flushed and anxious, I went to my husband and announced I may have Farrah Fawcett Ass Cancer.

I immediately made an appointment with my provider, a Nurse Practitioner I have been seeing for years. She took a look at what I now called Bob, and said it was worth following up with a colorectal surgeon type-person.

“Could be nothing, could be something. Could be melanoma.”

Referrals sent, and because the wheels of the American health system turn ever so slowly, someone finally got back to me almost a month later. An appointment made to the doctor of my choosing, because I have worked in this field long enough to know who to seek out and who to avoid like the plague.

Meanwhile, the wheels in my brain are burning rubber. My god, what if I really do have Farrah Fawcett Ass Cancer? I’ll have to have chemo, possibly surgery.ff I will end up with a colostomy bag. Will my husband still find me beautiful if I have a front butt? What about my daughter? Can I live long enough so she will remember me when I pass on? 

It’s but a fraction of a glimpse of what my patients go through. I can’t even imagine what it is like for them.

So, I meet with the doctor, and he sends in his Nurse Practitioner to look in my toot-hole, with him peering over her shoulder. It’s not awkward at all. And also, he has heard every asshole joke known to the universe, so don’t even try to surprise him. Doctor decides that I do have something worth checking out, and as he puts it, “If I get to touch you, I’m doing a colonoscopy.”

You get to have your first colonoscopy when you hit 45, unless there is a problem (like mine) or there’s a colon problem history in your family. Now, I don’t hit 45 for a couple months, so my back-door birthday surprise arrives early.

Worst. Birthday. Present. Ever.

Bowel Prep Day begins, and I am given a list of what to do. Kick off the day chugging back an entire bottle of Mag Citrate. Which is like a really tart, flat, Sprite. But I like salty, tarty things, and it’s not horrible (but it does go down easier with Sonic ice to crunch on while you drink it). Take 4 Ducolax tabs (thank God they didn’t require suppositories). Drink 64 oz of fluid (usually Gatorade) with a metric fuck ton of Miralax in it.

miralax

Drink all of it. And if you are not “clear” (which is to mean you need to be peeing out of your butthole), drink more. If you are still not sure, drink more. Drink more until until you feel like a tick, and the slightest hug is going to cause you to pop. Go to bed, and hope you don’t lose control of you now cleaned out lower GI system and spray your husband, who sleeps innocently by your side.

Wake up! Today is the day!! Shower with Hibicleanse, which will wash every microbe off your body and dry you out. No lotions after. No deodorants. No makeup. No perfumes. Just you and your natural, post-bowel prep smell and itchy skin. Be at the clinic promptly at 8:15am, where you get to wait until your case which is slated for 11am. Meanwhile, you get to talk to everyone who is going to get to look at your butthole, and you hope that you don’t run into anyone you know. There’s a nurse named Bucky who has been there forever. She gets around on a shiny red scooter with a rainbow-colored license plate that says Bucky. Everyone knows Bucky. She’s more than an employee, she’s an institution. You sit on your cart, waiting your turn to get your insides turned out, watching Bucky zoom back and forth. Meanwhile, you are secretly jealous because you don’t have a cool nickname where you work, and you don’t get to race around the clinic on a scooter with your name on a license plate.

Everything else passes in a blur because you get the fun drugs and get carted back into OR with your own little entourage of nurses and residents, and thankfully, you are not awake while your doctor boldly goes where no man has gone before. My biggest fear, aside from dying on the table (because anesthesia terrifies me), was shitting on the doctor while I was out. I mean, I did the prep and was basically peeing chicken broth out of my butthole like I was supposed to, but you never know. There could be a pocket up in there, housing some horrible secret, waiting for the right man with a scope to come and poke at it, causing a torrent of foulness to stream out and splash on his shoes. Then, you have to quit your job at the Cancer Center because you can never face him again, knowing that he will never get that smell out of his Nikes. I’ve heard the stories.

In the end (heh), doc cuts out three unwelcome squatters in No Man’s Land. I come home with feeling like someone shoved a hot curling iron in my butt. (Not that I have experience with such things, but I can only imagine.) Sitting is uncomfortable, standing is uncomfortable, walking in uncomfortable. I made the mistake of bending over while getting a glass out of the dishwasher and a small fart came out. Only it wasn’t a fart. And it kept coming. I scurried to the bathroom thinking I was hemorrhaging , only to find that my chocolate starfish was putting it’s final punctuation on the day. Blurp!

I don’t trust farts anymore. From here to the day I die, I will always assume that there is more than just air waiting to come out.

Doc doesn’t think it’s Farrah Fawcett Ass Cancer, but he sent the pieces to pathology anyway because you double check at shit. I’m allowing myself to breathe a little easier now. Even if it does come back as something bad, I, with the support of my amazing husband, family and friends, will just deal with it. You just can sit and wait for The Bad to happen.

Life is what is happening meanwhile. Live it. Get your colons checked!

Just don’t trust those farts.

 

Getting Out: Waiting for Danger

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I remember back in my church-going days, we were having a lesson in Sunday school. The subject got on the pyramids in central America, and how people would pack their families and travel to these pyramids to hear their leaders speak. A sort of Mayan General Conference, if you will. People would pitch their tents towards the pyramids, the leaders would speak from atop the pyramids, and their voices to would carry to the people surrounding.

Now, I don’t know if this is actually true, or just another historical inaccuracy that the church pulled out of their ass, but that is beside the point of this story.

So, the Sunday School person posed the question, “Do you pitch your tent facing the pyramid, or away?’

Naturally, everyone said towards. I, being the typical lone dissenter, said away. My reasoning was that if danger was coming, I wanted to see it, and be prepared to fight it.

This story best sums up my life.

Growing up, I remember many of the times Dad came home drunk. He was seldom a happy drunk. He was mean and nasty. My earliest memory was around the age of five, and he had pulled a gun on my mother and punched out a window. He passed out on my parents’ bed, and the thing I most remember is standing in the doorway, staring at his battered hand. Blood trickling from his knuckles and dripping onto the blue blanket.

Every single time he came home, or I saw him crack open his first beer of the latest bender,  I could feel body clench. My heart rate would speed up, the adrenaline would begin. I felt a heightened sense of alertness. And, I swear, time would slow down.

Every. Single. Time.

It wouldn’t be until much later in my adult life that I learned that this reaction was my autonomic and sympathetic nervous systems working in tandem in what is called an Acute Stress Response. Most people know it by “Fight or Flight”.

terrorism-threat-levels

Because I spent my formative years in a constant state of orange to red levels of threat, I still struggle, as a grown-up, to “come down”. It is why I have anxiety over tiny things. It is always why I am the epitome of stone cold calmness in emergent situations…which is great in code situations at work, not so much when you have a great life, but obsess over the ways you’re going to lose it all because something bad is going to happen and take it all away.

I do have a great life. I have a job I enjoy, and I work at my pleasure, not because I have to. I have the house I always wanted. A husband that is crazy about me. A beautiful daughter that adores me. A new car. Cute dog. I don’t ever have to worry about money, or being homeless, or being able to take care of my child. From all appearances, I have a perfect life.

But it’s not perfect, because I’m always scared some unseen boogie man is going to come and rip it all from me. My life would be perfect if I allowed it to be. It’s difficult for me to just be happy because I have my tent pitched away from my amazing life, just waiting for The Bad Thing to happen.

Being with someone who is always “switched on” is challenging. I know that it frustrates my husband sometimes. We know where it comes from, but what we don’t know is how to fix it. I’ve tried meds, but that worked a little too well and I was stripped of all feelings and just went through life like a robot. Which was really weird when you cannot feel anything. My husband bought me a new car, and the best I could work up was, “Meh.”

Now, one could argue that these feelings, behaviors or are no mutually exclusive to poverty. Even people who are not poor experience childhood trauma and experience it’s lasting effects. But I would be curious to see studies that show the correlation between living in poverty and childhood trauma. Being poor and having a parent who is an addict are not mutually exclusive either. Again, this has just been my experience….and this is me, trying to piece is all together in an effort to explain why my brain processes information that way it does.

In talking with a therapist, and largely my husband, I have been able to recognize behaviors, cycles, triggers that send me into that feeling of anxiety of losing what I value the most. With their help, I am picking up my tent, and re-positioning it to face all that is good in my life.

The Boogie Man is still out there, but living your life preparing to war against him is no way to live. It’s simply existing for the next big fight, and there is a huge difference between living and existing.

 

Introducing: The Getting Out Series

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In today’s climate, there’s a lot of talk tossed around about poverty, and what it means to be poor. Usually, by those who know the least about what being poor is like.

What is poverty? Is it something as simple as having no money? Is it a label we automatically give people just because they make below a certain amount? Is it a state of mind? A way of looking at the world? A perception? A system to keep rich people in power and poor people at their feet?

Yes.

Do a Google search of being poor, and you are likely to find tons of accounts of what it is like. Or, you can listen to a candidate recall the tale of some unfortunate soul who has fallen on unfortunate times. You can read every first-person account, hear every second-person account, and even listen to the experts tell you all about it, but you will never come close to knowing unless you have experienced it first hand.

It’s something I speak with my husband about regularly. He immigrated here when he was a teenager. Where he comes from, poverty means something completely different than it does here.

I know I have mentioned it in the past, but it is not something that I have spent a lot of time on. I have a ton of experience to draw from, but quite frankly, it can be traumatic for me to revisit. I used to think that PTSD only applied to veterans who came home from war, or someone who had been assaulted. It never occurred to me that not having money growing up would have such an impact on me, even as an adult. But it’s more than simply not having money. It’s not having security. It’s going to bed hungry because there wasn’t enough food for dinner. It’s wearing layers and layers of clothes in your house because the heat has been turned off. It’s the shame. It’s the uncertainty. It’s the fear. It’s the despair. It’s the hopelessness. It’s the system that is designed to keep you there.

I’ve decided to put these discussions and thoughts to words on paper (so to speak). There’s too much information about it to simply put in one blog post. So, it’s going to go here. Along with my usual observations of daily life.

At some point, I would like to open up for outside submissions on this topic. For everyone’s experience is unique, as is the perceptions surrounding them. I am curious to know, what does poverty mean to you? If you did, how did you get out? What are some of your observations surrounding it? What do you wish other people could understand about what it means to be poor?

Into the rabbit hole we go…