I have an obsession around bodily functions involving the bathroom. Pooping and peeing specifically. See? I told you this was going to be about the shameful things I do. My mother would be horrified at this post — putting all of my most personal business on the Internet for the world to see. It’s not something normal people do, now, is it? I guess I’m not normal people. I’m me and putting my most personal business on the Interner is what I do.
I have what’s called a suprapubic catheter. This means my pee comes out of me and into a bag — not into a toilet like yours probably does. This became necessary when I could no longer stand up on my own. Maybe because I can see my pee I’ve become obsessed with making sure my pee is what I consider to be the right color. Extremely light yellow is best. This means my obsession with water drinking leads to accomplishing this goal. I have always been an obsessive water drinker even before I became disabled. At work, for example, I always had a liter sized bottle of Smart water at my side. I liked the size and shape of the bottle. It fit so nicely into my black leather backpack and was easily refillable at the water station in the office. At one point, it was one of the most important functions of my executive assistant — this noting when my bottle was getting low and refilling it for me before I ran out. Lord knows how many bottles I drank each day. I didn’t keep a count back then for water drinking was seen as a healthy habit. Perhaps even the reason for my impeccable skin? People noticing my water habits would often comment about this. I had a water cooler at home with a five gallon bottle of purified water that sat atop it. The effort it took getting that bottle up there seemed valiant — supportive of my most healthy habit — enabling my most healthy habit.
Now, however, I’ve put myself in the hospital not once but three times with something called hyponytremia which means extremely low sodium. I’ve had actual seizures which can lead to extremely scary results even death. This hasn’t stopped my obsessive water drinking but only leads to me trying to stay on top of it with intermittent lab tests performed by my in-home nurse. A bmp or basic metabolic panel, measures my sodium levels allowing me to make sure I’m always in the acceptable normal range not allowing my sodium levels to get too low. After one of my last and worst experiences with hyponytremia led to a recommendation from my medical team to restrict my water drinking to two liter sized bottles a day. You can imagine what this new restriction did to the color of my pee. Yep. Nearly yellow/brown urine that looks as unhealthy as you can get even though my medical team insisted it was healthiest for me. Currently I’m trying to keep to a seven bottle a day restriction while still maintaining bmp results in the normal ranges. I still maintain my loyalty to Smart water even though the black leather backpack is a thing of the past. All of this effort to try keeping myself out of the hospital while maintaining pee of the acceptable extremely light yellow color regardless of what my medical team deemed most healthy.
Which brings me to poop. My obsession with a healthy daily poop also began before my disability but continues on even with my ever-increasing levels of disability. The problem is, of course, that I have extremely limited feeling in my lower body and even less muscle control. This means that I don’t poop like regular humans do but I use a bidet to accomplish this task. The bidet I use is called a Tushy — easily attachable to any toilet. Using the bidet for pooping means getting me on the toilet is a whole process that involves several steps, the help of a skilled home health caregiver and a tool called dycem — a black plastic sheet that is used for added grip. We use the dycem to position me on the toilet where the water can hit in just the right spot. I spray the bidet water into my body until my body becomes full and pushes whatever might be hiding in my colon is propelled into the toilet. This whole process for pooping means going poop outside of my home, such as in the hospital, just becomes impossible. Even under the best circumstances, pooping feels all but impossible and my quest for a once daily healthy poop is thwarted and I am forced to move on with the hope that a new day will mean a better result. When this happens, I will be haunted by my bodily failure until the next time the whole process can happen again — meaning there is the next logical need to get me on my sit-to-stand lift and transferred to the toilet. Getting on the lift is super hard on my body.
I want to pretend I’m not as fundamentally disabled as I am or that my body isn’t breaking down before my eyes but it so obviously is.
One can look at this obsession with bodily functions and easily deduct that this is me trying to control even the most basic parts of this disabled body I am forced to live within. Trying to control the uncontrollable in a life where I have literally no control over anything that happens or could possibly happen. Wanting so desperately to live like a so-called normal and not actually join my now-mandatory tribe among the fundamentally disabled — anything but normal. In fact, not normal at all. Which might be where the shame comes in. Wanting so desperately to live like a normal when that is fundamentally impossible feels shameful. Needing to use a bidet to poop feels shameful to me. Being obsessed with the color of my pee to the point where I risk putting myself in harm’s way feels shameful to me. The need to write this post should be embarrassing to me but isn’t for some strange reason.
I guess this is my safe space. Go figure.
Source: bethybrightanddark.com