April 1st, 2007
I started an entry here about someone in my life right now who is a bossy, insensitive sow – but then I thought, what would Jesus do? So I’m going to talk about pooping instead.
I am a recovered constipated person. I know I have confessed this online before, so, Husband, when you read this, don’t freak out - everybody already knows. So – I spent many years struggling with chronic constipation, which waxed and waned depending on, as far as I could tell, nothing in particular. I spent many, many hours hunched up and straining on the toilet, wishing I could go and being terrified that one day I would poop out the bottom section of my lower intestine whole, and that I would have to have it reinserted somehow. Probably somehow painful. But not before having to show up at an emergency room with an extruded tube of intestine bundled up in my underpants. Such is the life of the chronically constipated person.
Then I moved in with Husband (then, Boyfriend), and he suggested I try adding fiber to my diet. Fiesta! Fiber had been one of those things that I knew about, sort of, but never imagined it might actually apply to me, sort of like recycling. But desperation makes for strange bedfellows. Fiber changed my life, and my bowel functioning. It also changed the air around me, because I guess I really wasn’t getting enough fiber and my system had a hard time adjusting. I farted like a champion. Actually I still do – I can totally outfart Husband. But anyway – in those first weeks it was like a little trumpet grew in my ass and went off every three minutes. The good part is it brought along its friend the snowplow and I took huge, glorious poops all the time. It was a real turning point in my life.
Now, I no longer need a fiber supplement but I still go regularly, which is so wonderful that I just don’t know how to say how special it is to me. This is all a huge lead up to today’s confession: I’m constipated! Ack!
Drink more water.
And then drink more water.