First, forgive the length of this post, brevity is not my forté.
I try not to make this a place for me to bitch about whatever maladies or ailments I might have at the moment, but this was a fairly life-changing (and damned near life-ending) experience.
Hopefully this can serve as a cautionary tale for someone out there. As some of you (my imaginary fan club) may or may not know I work in group home with four adults with “intellectual disabilities” (that’s the latest PC term, anyway). I work 3rd shift 14/14/12 hours.
Now just a bit more setup. I have an undiagnosed (so far) bleeding disorder, generally not an issue, unless I’m subjected to some sort of trauma. Sometime back I saw a “Dr.” for a stiff, very sore, and inflamed big toe. When I got home with my prescription of Naproxen (an NSAID) I immediately realized that I’m not supposed to take those, and so, I didn’t.
Flash forward to a few weeks ago. The toe is flaring up again, and tylenol proves to be ineffective. Naturally I remember the Naproxen and decide to give it a try. It works and I’m thinking that 500mg once or twice a day, a few days a week should be fine.
So, flash forward to this past Sunday night/Monday morning: I’ve just had a slice of apple pie and my toe is starting to really hurt again, so I take another (my second of the day) Naproxen. I’ll try to keep what came next as in-offensive as possible.
My bowels began grumbling that they needed to be moved, so I did. When I looked into the bowl and saw that one end of the stool (sorry) was composed of the stereotypical ‘old coffee grounds’ I said to my self, “Oh, that’s not good.”
I’m thinking at that point that I’d be ok to finish my shift and can worry about it later.
Within minutes I began to realize that I had miscalculated.
After evacuating (shitting, if you prefer) several gushers (I lost count) of increasingly bright-red blood I knew I was in serious trouble and needed to call someone to take over for me, and ‘maybe’ an ambulance. The problem was; at this point I couldn’t stand without blacking out and didn’t have a phone within reach.
Finally during a break in the action, I crawl to a phone, get my boss’s number and make the call, (from the toilet) downplaying the situation not wishing to alarm her. A few minutes later as my hold on consciousness grew extremely tenuous I called back telling her “This is really bad, I’m going to have to call an ambulance.” (Which I should have already done, literally, hours earlier.) I did, then crawled to open the front door, so the EMT’s could get in.
The ambulance arrived, followed immediately by my boss, and it was off to the ER. I won’t bore you with my tales of the rampant, and apparently institutionalized incompetence I witnessed in the ER.
The bleeding stopped on its own by the time I’d been in the ER for a bit. They did all sorts of tests, revealing nothing that I hadn’t already deduced. They eventually moved me into a room, gave me two units of blood, all sorts of fluids and anti-biotics and such and they were even quite generous with the Morphine.
Tuesday afternoon (I arrived at the hospital around 5:30AM Monday) they finally let me eat, then Tuesday I was parolled, just in time to miss out on getting to vote.
Caldonia (my cat) was overjoyed to see me. She’s a little fat and I’ve noticed that she eats a lot more while I’m at work; so naturally I’d picked this weekend to start leaving her just enough food for the night.
They want to give me a chance to heal before they do any scope-work. So I have that to look forward to; colonoscopes, endoscopes, kinoscopes, otoscopes, kaleidoscopes, oscilloscopes, fluoroscopes, gyroscopes, telescopes, periscopes, all sorts of ’scopes.
I just wish they could tell me something concrete, right now I’m a complete wreck. Every twinge or grumble from my gut absolutely terrifies me.
I’ve already taken next weekend off from work, I’m a nervous wreck and I’m exhausted.
Oh, and the moral to this story?
Don’t take stupid chances with your health.
Ok, since I’ve already started down this path; here’s a useful term I coined several years ago:
snotrockletize (accent on last syllable) - the generally inadvertent act of blowing a snot rocket onto something (or, heaven forbid, someone). Example: “Damnit, the wind shifted and I snotrockletized my shoulder!”
Here’s a funny story of ’snotrockletization’ from Ireland for your edification.
Yeah, I know; I’m basically just an overgrown ten year old with (a little) more discretionary income and way too much free time.
There are several reasons that I have never eaten, and plan never to eat, a Hot Pocket. The main reason has nothing to do with the bit (see video here) that Jim Gaffigan does about them in his stand-up routine (that is one of the reasons, though).
My reason? I can’t hear the name without automatically thinking ’snot rocket’.
I know what you’re probably thinking: “Yuck! Why on earth are you writing about ’snot rockets’?”
Why? Two words… grass pollen.
Oh, and if you are an eater of Hot Pockets, good luck not thinking “snot rocket” from now on whenever you bite into one.
You’re welcome.
Years and years (20?) ago, I found no small measure of humor in Mattel’s “Animal-loving Barbie” and “Animal-lovin’ Ken” (who, you may recall, came with “his own chimpanzee to care for and love”). So, imagine my delight/horror when I stumbled across this:
Here’s the description from the website where you can purchase this treasure:
Finally, Barbie has a dog that eats and makes a mess! Tanner the dog eats and ejects waste from his body. At this point, Barbie can pick it up in a scooper, and then Tanner will eat it again– just like your real dog!
Finally!?!
They call it the “Barbie Doll and Tanner Scooper Dog Set”, but in the spirit of my last post, we all know the name should really be:
Poop scooping Barbie and Tanner, the shit-eating wonder-dog.
Wouldn’t you love to have been the proverbial ‘fly on the wall’ at the meeting when the drug-addled lunatic brilliant toy-designer pitched that idea?
Mr. Klee says:
“Yo feces be bein’ pitiful, fool!”
O.K., he doesn’t say that, exactly. But infomercial huckster
Klee Irwin does assure me that if I take his product,
Dual Action Cleanse; I will
“have excellent bowel movements with increased length and girth.”
Go ahead, take a few moments to think about that.
In the same infomercial he also details being “frightened” the first time he saw his four year old daughter’s bowel movement in the toilet and states that compared to hers, his “bowel movements were inadequate, to say the least.”
Sounds like Klee has a case of dookie-envy.
First of all, I can’t imagine anyone actually wanting their bowel movements to have “increased length and girth”.
Secondly, I can’t imagine anyone buying anything this guy is selling. I mean seriously, just look at him!
Apparently there is a sucker born every minute, some of whom are willing to fork over their hard earned dollars in order to have bigger turds; you know, for health reasons.
I know, I know; “Enough with the bodily function posts, Greg! Get back to the obscenity-laced tirades and bicycling tales that we all enjoy.”
I’ll work on that.
So, several years ago at work, there was a large piece of Butterball turkey breast in the refrigerator which was over 3 days old and therefore destined to be thrown out. Being frugal (and hungry) I couldn’t bear to see it go to waste, so ignoring the voice of warning in my head, I commenced to eat it. After about an hour of blissful snacking, the angry rumbling from my gut announced that I had made a mistake. I spent the next 12 hours in misery, having the lesson driven home. Abdominal cramps, fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea; the whole shebangabang. After surviving this ordeal, I vowed never to repeat my mistake.
Fast forward to the weekend before last. There I was again, at work, looking for something to eat, when I discovered a package of sliced ham (sandwich meat) in the refrigerator. According to the date, it had been opened a week earlier, but it seemed okay and I figured sandwich meat has a pretty good shelf-life.
So, I ate it. Just as before, my stomach let me know pretty quickly that I had made a mistake. Unlike previously, despite some pretty intense nausea, I didn’t puke (which was probably also a mistake, in retrospect).
No vomiting, no diarrhea (either of which would have been welcome); it was as though my system decided to tenaciously hold on to the tainted meat, the better to teach the lesson. The cramping went on for days; the sweaty, feverish, achy, hit-by-a-truck feeling came about 24 hours in and it was nearly a week before the pain and bloating subsided.
Damn, I’m stupid sometimes!
I won’t do that again (gee, that sounds familiar).
So, today as I was rolling out on my ride, I happened to glance at the Madonna del Ghisallo medallion which adorns my bike’s stem. At that precise moment my cyclocomputer, stem, and the edge of said medallion were splattered with bird poop.
I’m not sure, but I think there’s a good chance that the little atheistic avian bastard is going to Hell for defiling a religious symbol like that.
So, have you seen the commercials for Northern ‘bathroom tissue’ with the cartoon bears? Now, of course we all know what a bear does ‘in the woods’, but do we really want to think about it?
One features the mother bear demonstrating to the little bear that with the fabulous Northern bear TP, s/he needn’t use so much. Another features this cutesy cartoon bear family, frolicking about, rubbing toilet paper across their cartoon bear bottoms asses.
Do I really want to imagine bear excrement (all full of bells and smelling of pepper spray) when I buy toilet paper? Or dancing cartoon bears, wiping their asses?
No! No, I certainly do not!
I’m starting to believe that when these advertising executives meet to develop new campaigns, they first pass out narcotics, booze, crayons, and possibly hallucinogens, then use whatever idea the last exec standing comes up with; reality-show style.
Examples of this new brainstorming technique’s offspring most likely also include the truly disturbing “The sausage comes from Jimmy Dean” ads, and the thoroughly disgusting Metamucil, Old Faithful, doo-doo geyser ads.
Here’s a funny tale of drunkenness for ya:
In February in Chichester, N.H., Thomas A. Barrett was fined $240 and given a six-month suspended sentence for his no-contest plea to creating a false fire alarm. Barrett told the judge that he was celebrating his 21st birthday at Jillian’s Bar & Grill, and as he staggered down a hallway to the men’s room, he mistakenly urinated on the floor and pulled the fire alarm, which he thought was a toilet’s flushing mechanism.
[Union Leader (Manchester), 2- 20-03]
Damn!
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