And who, amongst us, hasn’t had one? (Please understand that if you cannot even begin to “get” where I am coming from, I really don’t want to hear how you resent being subjected to poop stories…)

Ever heard anyone say they have had a shitty day? I bet you have and I also bet you have immediately pictured them running late for work or getting chewed out by a boss or customer or them spilling coffee on their clean white shirt. But, did it ever occur to you that they might mean shitty day? There are those of us who are not in the septic tank business that deal with a good deal of it. Shit, that is. Some people are paid to deal with it, as in hospital orderlies, and some of us just get stuck with it. Sometimes there is a lot of it. Henrietta has a Miralax habit that borders on addiction. She cannot do a poo without it. And if the stars are not aligned exactly right she may be gonna be plugged up even with it. She doesn’t usually go too long like this and isn’t too terribly uncomfortable. But, after not going for three days, Katy bar the door. We are trucking back and forth to the bedpan over and over, with false alarms. She is working fervently at it and will not stay in bed to do it. So I am stuck hauling her in and out of the wheelchair and bed over and over and picking her lower half up over and over and am out of breath all day. There is always an implied urgency with this whole operation that suggests that there will be a shit explosion if I don’t hurry fast enough. Though, to be fair, there has been. Well, virtually.

The other day John came in and we were doing all the running back and forth and he began to feel badly for me and wanted to know if he could do anything. This was toward the end of the waiting period and close to payload time. I was flustered and tired and I whipped open the door to H’s bedroom and shouted down the hall for him and asked him to come and get the bedpan and empty it. Now understand that no one on earth is as squeamish as John. He started down the hall towards me and stopped abruptly and looked horrified and said, “It smells like shit in the hall!” At this point I was walking toward him with the bedpan and I said, “If you don’t take this from me right now, I WILL dump it over your head.”. I think he realized I meant business and he pulled his tee shirt up over his nose, grabbed the bedpan and ran for the bathroom.

I got flowers the next day.