the investment pays off

Remember Bill Paxton in "Weird Science"?

My current meds, which got bumped up by the diabetes doctor (previous visit) after having been bumped down by the cardiac doctor (two visits ago), have been giving me a lot of trouble, intestinally speaking. Almost every day, I've got those gurgling borborygmi indicating imminent diarrhea. This means I hit the toilet several times more per day than the average person does. Sometimes, it's a close call. Luckily, where I work, the terlit is just right down the hall, but sometimes, the lone Western-style toilet stall in that restroom is occupied (everything else in there is squat toilets, which I normally avoid*), which means I have to heave myself out of that restroom and downstairs to the first-floor toilet at the bottom of the stairs. Same situation on the first floor: the lone Western toilet is sometimes occupado, which means I have to lumber down to the B1 level to try that restroom, which is also at the bottom of the stairs (you know how plumbing works: a lot of it is gravity-assisted, so restrooms in multi-floor buildings tend to be stacked on top of each other to allow for easier... flow). Normally, I can snag a toilet on my first try, but I've had unlucky days where I've had to scramble to the building's other, more esoterically located restrooms to release my evil squirtles. In my apartment, the situation is better: I live in a small studio, so the toilet is only a couple steps away. Easy to reach when desperation springs out of the bushes.

Years ago, I made an investment by buying a plastic mattress cover, counting on my becoming incontinent at some later point in my life, mainly thanks to age and concomitant sphincter weakness. What I didn't count on was taking meds, at this point in my life, that would fuck me up badly enough to make me reliably diarrhetic every single goddamn day, and for this to happen while I was still in my fifties. I wonder which meds are most responsible for this; I'll have to ask the next time I'm at the hospital (this coming July 12). 

Until about two weeks ago, though, I was fine. Then one night, I was in bed (I take my meds at night before sleeping, you'll recall), and I had the sudden urge to fart. Farts when your guts are gurgling can be risky, but I took the risk that night... and paid the price. The fart dislodged a shit plug. It's awfully hard, sometimes, to tell the difference between a regular old fart bubble pressing up against your interior sphincter and a shit plug masquerading as a fart bubble. Basically, I gambled and lost, and what came out was a diarrhetic shart. I credit my Jedi-like reflexes, though, with my clamping down on the potential torrent a tenth of a second before more than a blob came out, but the blob was enough, twould serve. Anyone who's dealt with their own or other people's shit (e.g., kiddies' or pets' shit) knows that even a speck of the stuff can ruin your entire day.

Lying on your back after realizing you've just sharted presents you with a new logistical problem: how do you roll off the bed without smearing shit all over your mattress? I was, at least, relieved that my investment in the mattress cover, like a shield around the second Death Star, had paid off: the mattress was safe from bombardment. I did what I could to remain clenched so as not to release the scatological tide. As I gingerly rolled onto my side and slid off the bed, I looked at the target zone and saw, clear as day, a small clump of crap looking for all the world like an incongruous divot of soil flung there during a lusty polo game involving tiny Scottish sprites. It brooded wetly, obviously frustrated by the layer of plastic beneath the mattress's cloth outer cover. But I didn't have time to ponder this; instead, I minced over to the toilet, which seemed a lot farther away than a mere few steps, pulled the tainted undies down, and let fly into the toilet bowl like a demonically possessed Gridley. My colon sang its vulgar fluid opera, spewing nastiness into the water. I flushed. And then, once the urge had passed and I'd had a chance to wipe myself and wash my bum, I took off my undies, cleaned them thoroughly in the sink, bleached everything I'd touched, then went back to the bed, gathered up the cloth mattress cover and its unholy cargo, and stuck it in the washing machine, setting the dial to "baby clothes"—a high-temp wash cycle meant to disinfect soiled clothing while also cleaning. With that problem solved, I returned to the mattress with Windex and a paper towel, saw the barest hint of a shit stain where the turd had sunk through, and cleaned that bitch up as best I could. And that was my emergency two weeks ago.

if my asshole were a girl

This morning was arguably worse because I had no control over what happened. I got groggily out of bed and went to the bathroom. The previous night had been one long parade of diarrhea sessions, to the point where my asshole was bleeding from all the wiping. (I have Preparation H, and I use it, but it's not the suppository kind, which is arguably easier to use once you get past the whole please-invade-my-anus thing. Instead, it's a gooey, oily, Vaseline-ish gel. There's supposed to be a plastic applicator tip that you screw onto the tube; the applicator is a few inches long, and you're supposed to shove it up your ass and goosh some gel onto your lacerated (or otherwise irritated) colon. I've never been able to do that successfully, so I just use an H-coated fingertip, which seems to work just fine. Anyway, I sat down on the toilet and, per the holy ritual, stared into the underpants hanging just below my knees.

And lo and behold: nearly the entire crotch of my underpants was covered in a dried, dish-sized shit stain that had obviously started out liquidy, spread via capillary action, and dried during the night as I slept like the damned. "Fuck," was the most intelligent utterance to leave my lips, and I had to prod my brain to think up a logical sequence of actions to take. I knew a few things right away: since I toss and turn when I sleep, I had undoubtedly spread the shit around all over the mattress this time. This was no Shitplug Unleashed shart scenario: this was the vandalism of a wild kid chaotically spraying graffiti all over the world's biggest and blankest wall. I also realized that this meant the filth wasn't merely on the mattress cover: it was on my inner blanket as well (I sleep with two relatively thin blankets). So as before, I washed and tossed my undies into the washer, then went over to my bed to assess the damage. Whatever staining had occurred on the mattress cover turned out not to be as big and bad as all that, and my blanket was tainted, but the stain there was also fairly minuscule. Still, as I said earlier: the merest blot is enough to ruin one's day. I knew I couldn't stuff both my mattress cover and my blanket into my tiny washing machine, so I put the machine on the short cycle this time (30 minutes is short in Korea), did one load, then did the other: mattress cover first, blanket next. I also texted my boss to say I'd be coming into work particularly late today because of an "emergency" that had arisen. My boss, who has a salacious side, ended up calling me and demanding details, so I told him what happened (yes, we're close enough to get that personal with each other; besides, he's been my guardian at the hospital twice, so what's the point of hiding medical issues? I'm also not the type to worry overly about my own dignity; witness how confessional this blog is). Duly informed, the boss grunted and hung up.

With everything in the wash, I had time to ponder my situation. This second incident had happened during the night, while I was asleep, when I had no control over my sphincters. Is this incontinence a function of age? I seriously doubted that. I turn 55 this August, not 85, and even many 85-year-olds are just fine, living diaper-free lives. Still, my boss, moving straight into blame-the-sphincter-not-the-meds mode, unhelpfully suggested I start doing butthole-Kegel exercises to keep things tightly puckered during the night. The problem is that, if the meds really are the problem (and they are), it won't matter how tight my asshole is while I'm conscious. To me, the best solution is to tell my docs about the problem and, hopefully, get my meds reduced. The other solution is to stop taking the meds right before I go to sleep so I have conscious control over my bowels. That could minimize the probability of accidental leakage.

Everything got washed, and I hung the blanket and mattress cover up high. It's all dry now (I stayed at work even later to make up for having arrived late; the linens had plenty of time to dry), so it's just a matter of snapping the cover back on and laying the blanket back on top of the bed. Will I take my meds tonight? I doubt it. I might have to start waking up very early in the morning and taking my meds then. This is going to throw off the rhythm I've developed over the past six weeks: meds plus insulin at night (I always think of insulin as a separate thing), wake up the following morning, take down my numbers (BP, BS, weight, etc.), then have a day—fasting on the days I walk, and eating on the days I don't.

I was depressed enough, today, to abandon my diet temporarily and go a little nuts at the local convenience store, but I'll be back to the discipline tomorrow. I have exactly a month until my doctor's visit, so I probably need to feed the office crew their luncheon this coming Friday or Monday. That will give me the better part of a month to get and keep my numbers down before the July 12 appointment. I'm not looking forward to that visit; I've been told I'll need to do some extra tests, including one to check my insulin resistance by eating, then seeing how quickly my blood sugar goes back down. (Normal people recover within two hours after a meal. I'm probably very insulin-resistant by that reckoning, returning slowly to my baseline... and I'm still too lazy to have broken out my continuous glucose monitor, which is useful for tracking things like blood-sugar recovery rate and, by implication, insulin resistance.)

Anyway, no meds tonight. I want a peaceful, shit-free night of sleep, and at least a few hours without any diarrhea. Jesus Christ.

EPILOGUE: even though I washed the stained underwear from the second incident described above (in the machine, I mean), the stain was still there when I pulled the thing out, so I threw it away and took out a fresh one. I hope this doesn't become a habit.

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*One of my personal-improvement projects is, eventually, to master the so-called "Asian squat," a necessary posture if you want to use a squat toilet properly... or simply rest on your haunches when there's no bench along the path you're walking. Here's one of many, many videos on the topic. 

I watch Strength Side a lot. They have a calm, you-can-do-it demeanor, and I'm following their instruction re: basic animal-flow patterns. They mostly concentrate on bodyweight activities, but they have nothing against weights and other equipment, which they also use.