I have Had A week

I thought I was going to get a lot done these last ten days, but I have instead been in a battle with my bowels – sometimes losing, sometimes drawing a stalemate for a few hours or so.

I still don’t know if I have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or what. I get chronic diarrhea every now and again, every few years, and it usually lasts as long as it takes for me to figure out what’s causing it, or for whatever was in my system to work its way through me and out – then I am fine.

This last week (plus) has been ugly. Up early, sometime around two o’clock, and a quick rush to the bathroom on the tips of my toes with my butt clenched like a miser’s fist to release the load I have apparently been holding in while I sleep. Once I wake up I can’t go to sleep, so I am getting very little sleep these days, waking up between 2:00 and 3:30.

Then, I start taking simethicone, to stop the early morning gas, and Imodium, to lock my bowels up for a few hours. I don’t drink coffee first thing in the morning, anymore. It agitates my bowels, and if I drink it at the wrong time, I have diarrhea again, usually just as I should be leaving to catch my bus. I take coffee to work in a tumbler, instead, and eat breakfast there, as well.

At work, I stay near a bathroom all day, chewing simethicone, eating as little as possible, to create as little gas as possible, to create as little diarrhea and urgency and false alarms as possible. Or, I am dropping my Imodium substitute, six or seven pills at a time; when I overdose on these, I am clenched so hard, my back hurts, If I eat, I stop before 3, to give my stomach at least an hour to calm down before I leave for work. I have had to turn back, just as I reached the bus stop, three or four times. because I mistimed a late afternoon snack.

I walk home carefully, so as not to jostle my intestines and whatever is still anthem, so I don’t have to break i nto a panicked run the last few hundred feet to my apartment, rushing up the stairs, praying anxiously for my bowels to hold., flipping through keys, practically forcing hte door open, tryign to lock the front door, and minind, hurrying, onwinged toes, to the bathroom, flinging my belt buckle open and unzippingmy pants, while i fling myself onthe toilet hopeing to get my hind end ofver the toilet’s mouth in time. In time.

I am stil haunted by the times I didn’t get in the right position in time. The clean up.

This has been my week (plus). Sitting on the toilet for ten, twenty minutes, pill popping, gas, diarrhea, chemically-induced constipation, running for the bathroom, thinking about my intestines, thinking about my feces, worry, anxiety, frustration, anger, resignation.

This will hopefully be over soon.