Tag Archives: Bathroom Humor

My ass – it’s killing me.

20 Oct

Oh hey! I’ve been a bit quiet lately, haven’t I? Sorry about that. For the most part, I’ve been busy with work, and –

What? How am I doing? Really? Sure you want to ask?

OK. Fine. I’ll tell you: I’m starting to get excited. On Tuesday I’ll be getting my second colonoscopy in six months. 

Admit it: you’re jealous.

As if two in a year weren’t thrilling enough, the real joy of this one is that it’s exactly a week before my birthday. Some people regain that youthful feeling with a spa day. Me, I prefer a more hard-core route. From my experience, nothing transports you right back to infancy like needing a diaper.

To each her own, I suppose. Whatever keeps you young.

Actually, I’m just happy I will be able to do the “prep” at home, in the comfort of my own bathroom, rather than in the hospital with a roommate. If you’ve never had a colonoscopy, I’ll spare you the details but this should help you get the gist: the prep (ironically branded “GoLYTEly”) ensures you will go to the bathroom over three dozen times in 12 hours – or until your stool is clear.

Let me repeat that: CLEAR.

Also: apologies for using the word stool outside of a kitchen or bar. Wholly inappropriate and kind of makes you puke in your mouth. So sorry about that.

Right. So I’m skipping the details, but I think we can all agree that when the preparation for a procedure defies nature – much like reversing the flow of a river – it can’t come without some, um, effort.

I don’t care how close I am with my parents – I’m glad they didn’t heed this advice.

By the way: If I ever have the option of inviting a dead or living celebrity to dinner, I think my money is on Katie Couric. Mainly because I want to ask the following: Katie, when you claim you had a colonoscopy on television, did you actually mean you PRETENDED to have one? Because I didn’t see any evidence of a) broken blood vessels from your face cramping up, b) shaky legs from running on zero nutrients for 48 hours, and c) terror in your eyes from the noise in your stomach.

My sister recently chatted me to tell the story of her friend’s son, who was given GoLYTEly in the ER, without the benefit of a semi-private bathroom. The poor kid had to STAND IN LINE after essentially detonating a bomb in his stomach. Again, I’ll spare you the details, but it’s safe to assume: that did not end well. Also, (just a hunch!) there may be a lawsuit related to human dignity at play.

So. I haven’t written for a while, but I think we’re pretty much caught up now. You might want to file this one under “Careful What You Ask For.”

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Updated: Bottoms-Up! (Literally, unfortunately.)

3 Apr

For those of you who read this earlier… an update has been posted at the bottom. I survived! 

I’m posting from the hospital room, waiting for someone to come and wheel me down for a colonoscopy. I wish I were joking – or over the age of 60 since this would at least be par for the course. As it is, I’m sitting here with an empty stomach, clenching my ass checks and scowling at the empty gallon jug of GoLYTELY next to my bed.

Don’t know what GoLYTELY is? Consider yourself lucky. It sounds cute, and I was tempted to applaud the pharmaceutical pun-master who named it, since it’s a laxative with the explicit goal of “cleaning you out to the point that your stool becomes clear liquid.” Sorry, but something that does that definitely does not go lightly.

In fact, there were times in the past 12 hours where I was alternately curled in my bed, moaning, “What have I done to deserve this?”  and staring at the toilet paper roll thinking, “I feel like a POW.”

Quick backstory… I came to the ER yesterday because I’d had sharp abdominal pains for 24 hours and was thinking it might be appendicitis. I’d put it off for quite a while because I remember one of my friends who is an ER doctor telling me that most people who think they have appendicitis just need to pass gas. I did not want to be that person, forced to slink out of the ER with a can of Glade. Hence why I waited 24 hours.

Once I was admitted they did a CT scan. The nice guy who administered the CT scan had a thick Indian accent, so I couldn’t exactly understand everything he was saying. As he explained the procedure to me, I thought I heard him say the word “anus” but I quickly dismissed it. But then he was standing in front of me with something that looked like a whoopie cushion with a tube hanging out of it, saying, “Roll onto your side.”

What. The. F+ck.

Hours later, I received confirmation that my appendix was perfectly fine, but that they found something that might be an indicator of Crohn’s Disease. Next thing I knew, I was admitted overnight to prep me for a colonoscopy. I nodded my assent, thinking, “Katie Couric had a colonoscopy on TV. No big deal.”

Turns out? I kind of want to bitch-slap Katie for false advertising. That, or maybe rich people don’t have to go through the whole GoLYTELY prep. Maybe they just go in and let loose all over the table like a woman giving birth, but the hospital charges so much that it makes it worth their while.

Fortunately, the night nurse (who is about my age and awesome) prepared me for what would happen, so I was able in turn to prepare my roommate, whose bed (unfortunately) is right next to our shared bathroom. “Ma’am,” I told her. “I apologize in advance. They’re about to pump me full of something that will have me trotting in there repeatedly, and I don’t expect it will be silent.”

As it turns out, she’s using a bedpan, so while I may have beaten her in frequency, she’s the one who should’ve offered an aromatic candle as a hostess gift.

Also: I felt sorry for her when I checked in because her chart indicates that pain management is a top goal, whereas I’ve been in virtually no pain since getting to the room. This morning, however, when her breakfast arrived – filling the room with smells of bacon and coffee – I’m thinking I’d gladly trade places with her… I haven’t eaten anything since Sunday. This is like Torture, Part II.

Of course, I suppose I should be careful what I wish for or define as torture. I still have the actual procedure ahead of me. Wish me luck!

UPDATE: I survived! The actual colonoscopy was a piece of cake compared to the prep.

When they rolled me into the room for the procedure, I had two doctors, two nurses and an anesthesiologist surrounding me. I looked around before they put me under and said with a straight face, “I’m pretty sure you’re about to have an amazing experience.” 

As it turns out, they did. How do I know? Because I WOKE UP (no joke) halfway through, looked around and said, “Shouldn’t I be out for this?” right before they adjusted the drip and knocked me back out. Apparently my need to manage situations is a bit hard to give up. 

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Nice to meet you. Where’s your bathroom?

31 Mar

Last post about my trip to Atlanta, I swear.

The weather was gorgeous while I was in Atlanta, so Liz and I took a few long (five mile?) walks. Liz is in fantastic shape, so I’ve always found it hard to keep up with her when we walk. She’s an arm-pumping kind of walker. I’m more of a stroller. As a result, I’m usually winded, so my strategy is to lob questions at her so she’ll do most of the talking.

This time, when I saw her loading up Jackson in his stroller, I was excited because I thought it meant we’d be going at a leisurely pace. Silly me! She walks just as fast with a stroller – even going up hills and across rocky paths. She’s like a human tank that only weighs 100 lbs. It’s truly impressive.

So we ventured out for a long hustle, and about halfway through my stomach seized up. “Liz,” I asked nervously. “Is there a bathroom anywhere around here?” (We were on a pretty busy road lined by office buildings, but I wasn’t seeing anything that would be open on a weekend.)

“There’s a Starbucks up ahead of us, maybe a half mile,” she said. Then she looked at my face and said, “Oh. Do you think you can make it?”

“I sure as hell hope so,” I told her. “Or else this visit is going to live in infamy.”

I won’t keep you in suspense: I made it to Starbucks just in the nick of time. And I’ll no longer complain about the cost of a cup of coffee there. I now understand their cost structure: that seemingly huge profit margin actually goes toward toilet paper and janitorial services for random people who stop in to use the facilities.

Because we were a good 2.5 miles away from home, I was nervous about the return walk, so I pulled off about two feet of toilet paper and carefully folded it around my hand. Then, because I didn’t have any pockets, I tucked it into my sports bra.

Feeling very much the Boy Scout for my worst-case planning efforts, I met back up with Liz outside and we continued our walk. When we were about a mile from her home, she saw some of her friends out on their deck, so we waved and walked over.

We chatted with them for ten minutes or so, politely establishing how we all knew each other, where we work, etc.

As we walked away, I told Liz, “They seem really nice.” Then I looked down because something caught my eye. I stopped. “Liz! Look at me.” She looked and started cracking up. “Was this hanging out the entire time we were talking with them?” About eight inches of toilet paper was hanging out of the neck of my shirt, as if I were a walking dispenser.

Liz nodded. “I even noticed it,” she said, “but I just thought, ‘Oh yeah – there’s Alison’s toilet paper,’ like it was a normal thing for you to have hanging out of your shirt.” Which, given the weekend we had, probably makes sense.

Let’s agree: I certainly know how to make an impression.

Apparently, I roll like a celebrity.

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I’ll take function over beauty any day. In a bathroom.

10 May

Since I’ve done a crap job explaining why my posts are coming to you live from England this week, let me back up: Alan is working on a case in the UK for at least a month, so I (being ever so spontaneous) decided to hop a flight and join him for a week.

He’s staying in a corporate apartment near Kings Cross, which is handy because it has daily housekeeping and laundry service. Sounds like a great perk, but we’re both kind of weird about housekeeping — we usually only remove the DND sign from the door if we need new towels, preferring privacy to having a stranger make the bed. But this trip, I keep lobbying to let them in because they stock the fridge with fresh milk for our tea.

The apartment itself is quite nice — it was remodeled in the last few months, so it has nice modern finishes and a gorgeous bathroom. BUT (and this is a pretty big but, which is why I capitalized it): a pretty bathroom is not necessarily a practical bathroom. Especially if more than one person is sharing the space.

Exhibit A: The Toilet

Continue reading →

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Gaining the upper hand in negotiations.

22 Jan

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind on the work front as I’ve done a mad scramble to conduct Year End Business Reviews with some of our key clients in the Midwest. It’s meant a lot of travel and preparation, hence the absence on PithyPants for a few days.

This week I was onsite at a client from 9am-4pm in back-to-back meetings with different buyers and stakeholders from that company. The day was productive but taxing – especially because my normal eating schedule was disrupted. I tried to discreetly sip on a Diet Mt. Dew during my first meeting, but I felt decidedly W.T. so I abandoned the 20 oz bottle under the table and switched to water.

Interestingly, if you are craving caffeine and substitute your beverage with water, you end up pounding it by the gallon because you’re subconsciously not sated. So every time we had a 10-minute intermission between meetings, I bolted for the bathroom.

This wasn’t a big deal until my primary client – the woman who had coordinated the day of meetings and who is leading the charge on negotiating aggressive contract terms – ALSO needed to use the restroom.

You sit at a table and have formal conversations about ROI, cost-effectiveness, partnership. Then you hit the bathroom and continue the business talk, but with the odd accompaniment of bladders emptying.

Sitting on the toilet, I got a silent case of the giggles, thinking how funny it would be to have an “Austin Powers” moment in which I just kept peeing and peeing and peeing, leaving her to awkwardly stand by the sink and wait. Or how it would be awesome if she concluded her business by ripping an audible fart.

Maybe I’m blowing this out of proportion, but I just think there’s just something odd about taking a business conversation into a bathroom.

I suppose it could be worse. At least we weren’t using urinals. And we both washed our hands.

 

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