In Sickness and In Health

I know that in my last post I said I’d no longer be writing with an audience in mind, but I want to be perfectly clear that this post is most definitely written for an audience. This is not for me; this is not to be viewed as a journal entry. This is entirely intended to make public an event which happened to me a couple of weeks ago. Let it be known that I am sharing this openly, whole-heartedly, and without a shred of shame.

Two weeks ago found me heading to my company’s Philadelphia office for a meeting. I donned the lavender shirt and pair of white maternity capris I had happily purchased the day before, pleased to find capris that are actually the right length on me for the first time ever, then ventured out into the 90+ degree weather. I took the train up, bumping into a girl I have worked with for nearly two years, but whose name I didn’t even know, and enjoyed pleasant conversations with her both on the way there and the way back, discovering that we live mere blocks from each other, and forging the beginnings of what could easily become a friendship outside of work. I felt pretty in my new outfit, happy, successful, and perhaps even had a bit of that famous pregnancy glow.

Then came the trip home from the train station. My new friend and I walked from the train station to the light rail stop, a trek of perhaps half a mile. No big deal, right? Ordinarily no, but I have never responded well to heat. I’ve been prone to heat exhaustion and fainting spells, general unease, and a sense of being unwell. Ninety degrees isn’t exactly unbearable, but the humidity was high, and perhaps I am in a slightly weakened condition.

On top of the heat factor, all the iron in my prenatal vitamin combined with the general ineffectiveness of bowels during pregnancy meant I’d been constipated. I hadn’t crapped in three days. There was a three-day buildup. Are we seeing where this is going yet? (By the way, this wasn’t my first three-day wait since getting pregnant. The last time I was constipated for that long I was visiting my parents in Ohio. I was in a considerable amount of discomfort from the situation. When I heard my husband and mom whispering about enemas it literally scared the shit out of me.)

I had reached a diarrhea emergency alert level on the train ride back to Baltimore and quickly made my way to the train bathroom. But maybe my timing was a little off or maybe it was the smell of urine all around me or maybe it was the fact that I was trying to let loose 3 days of stool into a bowl with about a cup of water in it while barreling along at 60 miles an hour in a room the size of an average desk drawer. Whatever it was, I got little more than a squirt.

No matter. The emergency had passed and I’d be able to let loose in my own bathroom with a good book and soft toilet paper.

Then came that walk. Perhaps jogging the last 50 feet to catch the train is what did me in. Maybe it was the fact that there were no available seats and we had to stand for the 2 stops to ours. Maybe it was all the body heat of all those sweaty people on top of the heat of the day. Halfway to my stop I found myself clutching my pregnant belly and thinking, “Oh dear, Jesus, don’t let me shit my pants. Oh, sweet God, in the name of all that is holy and right in this world, not here of all places, don’t let me shit myself while standing on a train full of people trying to carry on a conversation with a co-worker I’ve only just started to get to know. Please God, give me 20 minutes, that’s all I need, just 20 minutes. This shit has been building for three days, surely it can wait another 20 minutes!”

The immediacy of the situation passed, but the need was still there. I got off the train and called my husband, hoping against hope that he had left work early and would be able to come pick me up to drive me the 1/2 mile home from the light rail stop. He didn’t answer his phone and I knew I was on my own. I would have to trudge up the hill in heels, clenching my ass cheeks together the whole time.

To my credit, I did make it all the way up the hill. I made it more than halfway home. But as I rounded the corner after the hill, the urgency returned. This could not wait. This bowel movement, denied for three days, would be denied no more. In a panic, I threw myself down on the curb, hoping that the pressure of a hard surface against my asshole would help keep it closed, would shore up the dam for just a little while longer until the emergency passed and I could make it the last block home. I could practically see my house, were it not for just one house blocking the view. I could not crap myself here of all places. It would be too much of a defeat. It would be like tripping on your own shoelaces on the way to home for the go-ahead run in the 9th of game 7.

I tripped on my shoelaces.

I felt a trickle making its way out and knew my pristine white capris – which the reader will remember had been purchased only 24 hours earlier – would never be worn again. I tried to keep it to just a trickle but the flood gates were dashed and my pants filled with an explosion. Then it just kept coming. Wave after wave of crap, so much crap I didn’t even know where it could possibly all be going and I was afraid to look down, to see my pants inflated with shit. I thought of an email exchange I’d had with a friend a month earlier about the merits of cloth diapers. She sent me a long email that included a line about how cloth diapers are better than disposables for preventing “up-the-back poops.” Despite all the helpful information she provided my only response was, “Up-the-back poops?!” I couldn’t get past that. And sitting there, knowing the entire area of my ass was already saturated in shit, I wondered if the crap still gushing out of me was making its way up my back.

And do you know, dear reader, what dilemma this thought posed for me? I had to decide if I should pull my new lavender shirt down to cover up any potential back poopage from being seen by potential passersby or if I should keep my shirt lifted a little to keep from risking ruining my new shirt along with my new pants. Yes, in the midst of the biggest bowel movement of my life, and the only one taken curbside, my concern was over salvaging some shred of my dignity or salvaging a $10 shirt.

I chose the shirt. Let’s face it, when you’re sitting on a curb stewing in a pile of your own feces on a 90-degree day, with the heat quickly and continuously making the smell emanating from the entire lower half of your body ever worse, do you really have $10 worth of dignity left to salvage? I don’t think so.

As the flood continued I dug my cell phone out of my purse and called my husband at work.

“I need you to come and get me right now.”
“OK.”

As soon as I said it I realized that this is not something a pregnant woman can say to her husband without inducing panic, so I didn’t mince words with clarifying the non-life-threatening nature of the emergency.

“I just shit myself.”
This was obviously not what the Mister was expecting to hear. “Oh. Oh … O, OK …”
“I’m by the church before the hill.”
“OK … I’ll leave right now.”
“Bring a towel.”

Then I sat there wondering how best to sit comfortably in a still-growing pile of crap without making it too obvious in my white pants that I was sitting in a pile of crap. It occurred to me that I could either be unbelievably embarrassed by the whole situation or share it loudly with all the faceless people crawling about this series of tubes. I could hardly fail to see the humor in the situation even as I was miserable and feeling ill. Lets face it, crapping your pants at the age of 26 is fucking hysterical. There’s no way around that even if you are a bit embarrassed by the lapse.

My husband brought the car around in short order with a towel laid out on the passenger seat. I quickly pulled myself up and made my way the two feet from the curb to the seat, feeling the results of my bowel efforts starting to slide down my legs and being once again stunned by the sheer volume of it all. We drove the one block home, and the Mister got out to unlock the door so I wouldn’t have to stand in humiliation on the porch for any longer than necessary. I took a furtive look around our street, hoping none of our neighbors – almost always outside on warm days – would be around. I may have embraced the humor of the situation but that didn’t mean I needed my neighbors to know I couldn’t control myself in public. Mercifully, no one was around, so I made an attempt to wrap the soiled towel around my ass and hobble up to the house. I made it inside, dearly wishing I’d worn pants that went more than an inch below my knee. I was dangerously close to dropping a load either on our floor or on our cat’s head.

I kicked my shoes off and pulled part of the towel down to hold everything in before the mess could extend any further than it already had. Then I stood there for a moment staring at my husband and asked, “What now? How am I supposed to get upstairs to the bathroom?” We looked stupidly at each other and then I decided to just make a run for it, hunched over to keep the towel by my ankles, and avoiding the rugs. I made it to the bathtub just in time.

My always-supportive husband brought a trashbag and held it open while I stripped off the towel, capris, and underwear. And that, boys and girls, is marriage. Think you’re ready to say “I do” to that hot chick with the nice rack and great legs? Ask yourself if you’ll still want her legs wrapped around you after seeing them covered in her own shit. Can’t wait for your strapping young man to pop the question? Ask yourself if he’ll still seem so strong and manly standing in your bathtub in a pile of his own feces. If not, maybe you’re not quite ready to take things to the next level after all. In marriage, your spouse’s shit is your shit.

My husband then brought soap from our stand-alone shower and a washcloth from the cupboard. He put the blinds down on the window that is directly in front of our tub. The window looks out onto a field and it’s highly unlikely anyone would be able to see me through it, and we generally leave the blinds up because the cats like to sit in the window. Still, having the blinds up in my bathroom when I’m on the toilet is one thing. Having them up when my naked ass covered in diarrhea is mere inches from the window is quite another. He removed the cats and gave me some privacy.

And then I washed. Oh dear Jesus did I wash. And when I finished washing in the tub, I got in the shower and washed some more. I scrubbed myself several times, wondering if I would ever feel clean, even though I reasoned that had I taken this shit as a normal dump, I would have wiped four, maybe five times, then showered later and felt perfectly clean for it.

During the entire bathing process I was aware that the pooping wasn’t even over yet. Oh, no, despite all that had come out, there was still more to come. After the shower I made my way to the toilet. I was instantly sweaty. We don’t have air conditioning and the heat in the bathroom was not helping to improve my sense of well-being.

I called for my husband from the toilet and asked him to bring me a fan and a glass of water. He barely managed to suppress a laugh as he left the room with me sitting naked on the toilet sweating my ass off, my head in my hands, a fan blowing just feet away from me, and a glass of water at my feet. I admit that it was probably not my sexiest moment.

I managed to work up such a sweat on the toilet and in the subsequent cleanup of the tub that I needed another shower. Then I pooped some more.

After an hour and 20 minutes from first plopping onto the curb, the total damage came to: two towels, one washcloth, one brand new pair of pants, one pair of underwear, one bath, two showers, one sponge, one pair of rubber gloves, one hell of a lot of Comet, countless glasses of water, and most of my dignity.

After all the cleanup I made my way downstairs to my husband, sat next to him on the couch, and sat in silence for a moment while both of us twitched away smiles before I burst out laughing and said, “That is the funniest thing that has ever happened to me.”

The days following The Incident were fraught with concern. Would it happen again? Would it be at work this time? What if it really did happen on the train? What if I left my cell phone at home that day and had to just sit on the curb all night waiting for my husband to come looking for me? It’s amazing how the confidence of 24 years of successfully contained bowel movements can be destroyed with one little pants-crapping. What do we expect of ourselves? Perfection?

My concern was made worse by the fact that after this happened I didn’t poop again for six days. I have never gone six days without crapping in my life. I didn’t even know it was possible to achieve such a feat without landing in the hospital from some kind of toxic buildup. With each passing poopless day I got more and more worried that my bowel overload would repeat itself. That shit was bound to come out eventually and I was no longer sure that I could control it when it did. I managed to replace my pair of capris, but I refused to wear them until I reached a normal poop schedule again. I took stool softeners and drank gallons of water. I ate lots of fruit. Finally, I broke down and bought prune juice, something I have never had to experience before. I was shocked at its thickness when I poured myself a glass. This wasn’t juice. This was some unnatural syrup-like substance, but I drank it anyway. That stuff works as advertised.

I suppose I could draw some conclusions about this experience, comparing it to the poop-, snot-, vomit-, drool-, urine-fest that is parenthood, but I think those are fairly obvious. This is just the first of many bushels of crap I’ll have to clean up over the next several years. The important thing is that my husband has proven that he’ll be there with me through the crap.  He’s a keeper. When there’s shit to be cleaned up, he’ll help and be concerned and maybe even laugh a little with me. He still loves me even when I poop profusely in public.

There’s a lot to be said for that in a marriage.