Something that should be easy

I’ve been seriously constipated ever since my surgery.  Literally 100% of the time since I left the clinic.  Almost exactly seven months now.  And what makes that more weird for me is that prior to the surgery I was never constipated.  In fact, I usually suffered from the opposite problem.

Yeah, it looks like this entry is going to be about poop.

I guess the story really started when I was little.  I was constipated once as a child, realized that I didn’t like how difficult/painful it was to go to the bathroom, so I decided to stop doing it.  I was probably six or seven at the time.  You don’t think logically at that age.  Never did it occur to me that pooping was an essential part of life.  I just knew that I didn’t want to struggle to poop anymore and the best way to make that happen was to stop pooping.

In my mind, I went six months without pooping.  I’m sure the reality is that it was much less than that.  I suspect that going that long without pooping would have probably killed me or at least put me in the hospital.  But however long it was, I just kept holding it in regardless of how much it wanted to come out.  The result, and I’m sorry if this is gross, is that it started leaking out in small quantities. I wasn’t exactly pooping my pants, but I was leaving quite a mess in my underwear.

Of course, my parents noticed.  And at first they figured I didn’t know how to wipe myself properly.  I remember my mom instructing me on how to wipe and me just thinking she was ridiculous for thinking I didn’t already know.  In hindsight, I don’t know why I didn’t just tell them that I hadn’t pooped in a long time.  Probably because I figured they would get angry at me. 

Eventually they took me to a doctor who could immediately tell (I’m not quite sure how) that I hadn’t pooped in a while.  He instructed my mother to give me an enema to clear the blockage (gross) and then gave me child laxatives.  They were flavored like chocolate but still really disgusting.

Embarrassment is…having your mother give you an enema.  

Well, it worked.  I took the laxatives and things went relatively back to normal.  Then after a while, I got constipated, it hurt, and I decided to stop pooping again.  Really.  I don’t know why the cause-and-effect part of my brain wasn’t working at that age.  What following was a complete repeat the the previous experience.  Right down to getting an enema from my mom.  But this time, the doctor figured there must be a problem and recommended a barium enema to explore my colon.  

That wasn’t fun.

That was when I was diagnosed with IBS.  Irritable  Bowel Syndrome.  They have a name for everything.  I continued the fiber laxatives for years until I eventually got old enough to realize that I didn’t need them, I just needed to suffer through constipation when I got from time to time.

But then suddenly I was never constipated.  I pretty much never got constipated again until after the surgery.  It’s been very awful to deal with, and really un-ladylike to have to disappear into the bathroom for 30 minutes at a time to struggle with something that should be easy.  I hope it goes away soon.