The setting: A private hospital room, a bed near the window, beeping equipment. A female patient is attractively dressed in a designer hospital gown, two sizes too big, open down the back. Her decency remains intact because she has old cotton panties on. She is tethered both to a monitor and a drip, hoses and cords too short to allow her to reach the bathroom. A commode chair has been placed adjacent to the monitoring equipment. The chair is a steel-framed affair with a toilet seat and a removable, shallow dishpan underneath to catch her "droppings" with a gap of about a half an inch from the top of the pan to the bottom of the seat. When the patient sits on it, her feet barely touch the floor. A loose roll of toilet paper sits on the rolling table beside the bed along with a small box of tissue and a tube of lip balm.
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It is 9:00 AM. I've gone 36 hours with nothing to drink or eat. My mouth tastes and feels like a flock of sheep have passed through shedding wool along the way. A nurse who looks like Ali McGraw in Love Story (early in the movie, hair tight in a bun, big serious black glasses) mixes up the GoLytely potion and leaves the jug on the table with a Styrofoam cup. I pour my first glass and take a sip. I'm so thirsty it actually tastes good. The instructions from the pharmacy tell me to drink 1 cup every 10 minutes. My nurse, Isobel, tells me to call her after I use the commode so she can check and clean it. |
About 10:00 AM, an hour after quaffing my first cup, GoLytely began to take effect. This goes well enough, three or so gentle flows of matter with the consistency of pea soup over the span of an hour or so. "Piece of cake," I think. I call the nurse and she washes the pan out. |
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About 11:00 AM, GoLytely's scrubbing bubbles started working and the cleansing took on a more assertive feel, with that "got-to-go-right-now" urgency. Things were definitely clearing out. I was experiencing one movement for each cup of GoLytely, each about 10 minutes apart. One particularly aggressive spurt hit the pan bottom and rebounded, hitting the bottom of the seat, cascading out the back of the commode and washing across the floor. My panties hopelessly soiled, I tossed them across the room. I called the nurse. She was clearly annoyed with the mess I had made but sent the orderly to clean it up. |
Around noon, the tempo and intensity of my bowel contractions hit a crescendo. In the final hour of cleansing, I was spending more time on the commode chair than anywhere else. After one particularly explosive event, I found I left the toilet paper out of reach. I decided to make a run for it, buns exposed. I threw the toilet paper into the basket of my IV stand. A storm was raging in my abdomen, and it was a loud one. Rumbles, squeals and angry sounds were coming from my belly. Leaves and twigs were swirling in the pan. Another wave of liquid breached the top of the pan and flowed across the floor. I called the nurse. No one came for almost 40 minutes. |
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My husband walks in. The dear man has brought me a toothbrush and toothpaste in a small pink plastic bag. He has taken these out and put them on the table. I ask him to put my panties in the bag. As wonderful and supportive as he has been during this experience, this is not my finest hour and not something I want him to see (or smell). My bottom has been abused. It just wants to go home and rest. There is just a little of that awful liquid in the bottom of the jug, maybe one cup. It's a good thing, because stuff is now coming out faster than it is going in. |
Into the room walks a female doctor I've never seen before, the long-absent Isobel in tow. "Get your things together. We're going to move you to the Medical/Surgical floor." "Can't this wait a few minutes?" I ask. The Bed Nazi departs without an answer, the nurse trailing behind her. An orderly comes to clean the floor. My bowels clench and drain. My husband pours the second-to-last cup of horrible stuff. We decide moving right now is an indignity neither of us will tolerate. When Isobel returns, I tell her I'm not going anywhere until I'm done squirting poop. She glares at me. I smile back at her. She leaves. |
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My husband pours the last cup of accursed GoLytely and begins gathering my things for the move. I ask him to pick up my lip balm, but please, don't put it with my panties. I drink the last cup. I have my final spasms and expel nearly clear liquid with a few flakes. The end of this ordeal is near! A few minutes later, my transporter arrives to take me to my new room. He helps my husband collect my things: my parka, toothbrush, toothpaste, tissues and the pink bag. As I am wheeled out of the room, I ask my husband, "Where's my lip balm?" The transporter holds up the pink bag and says, "I put it in here." |
The End
(no pun intended)