Unfurled

The subject of bowel movements comes up more often in conversation than I’d like to admit. I’m still not sure if this is a reflection of my own personal obsession or if the world is in fact, fastidiously fixated on this most fickle of bodily functions. It wouldn’t be fair to speak of others’ toilet tribulations without first introducing my own first. This of course begs the question as to why I feel this would be an interesting subject to anyone but myself, but fortunately this is my memoir.

I just pooed (pood?). For those who know me as a daily poo-er (which is to say most of my friends and acquaintances) would perhaps not think this is such a feat, but I just pooed <i>at night</i>. I am a by-the-book-AM-caffeine-responsive kind of gal and this deviation from my ritual is a little off-putting. I wondered, for example, as I was sitting patiently on the toilet flipping through the garden furniture section of the latest West Elm catalog what impact this might have on my poop volume in the morning. Is this indeed some surplus I gathered from the day– or will this negatively impact how satisfied I feel tomorrow morning?

I suspect that this unusual evening event was brought on by a patient I saw this evening. She was a 64 year old woman with irritable bowel syndrome who was recently taken off her zelnorm (voluntarily taken off the market Novartis because reports of increased heart disease in people taking this drug) and subsequently became quite constipated– for five days, she did not poo. The radiologist reported that he hasn’t seen that much stool on an x-ray in a v.e.r.y. long time. She was already eating bran buds for breakfast <i>and</i> lunch, taking colace, on miralax and had tried sennakot and dulcolax, both of which made her sick.

And I thought I had poo problems.