And I'm really very sorry for putting you through this. But it's the sort of uncomfortable conversation that has to happen- like discussing birds and bees with your mom or dad. Set aside your squeamishness and have the maturity to deal with the New American Plague:
Did you know that one in five adult Americans has irritable bowel syndrome? You probably didn't. It's not something people like to talk about in mixed company, or in the office, or at church. Discussing the details of diarrhea and the like is as taboo as openly discussing the bloody process of childbirth. Such vivid realities are best left in the mythic, solitary suffering moments they occur in. But just as every child is a secret reminder to someone whose been there that a belly swelled and flesh was torn, irritable bowel syndrome is an elephant in the room that's still invisible to most people- unless they are among the twenty percent of the population that suffers it. It's a modern-day dysentery. A secret pandemic condition that millions have but everyone else ignores.
Rarely does someone call her peer to say, "I'm sorry, Sheila. I can't pick up your kids for soccer practice this afternoon like we planned. And, actually, well, I feel really horrible asking you this, but is there any way that you could pick up Leon? See I just can't ride in the car because I've got these horrible runs and I can't really be away from a toilet for more than a few minutes. I've taken some Pepto Bismol, but nothing really helps."
Twice as many American women as men suffer IBS. Fifty percent of the people affected develop symptoms in their twenties.
It would be horrible. How could you ever plan a backpacking trip? The few days leading up to the trek, a person would be worried that IBS would show up on the trail like a cold sore on the face of a movie star the day of her close-up kissing scene. There you'd be, hiking along, lugging your huge pack, washing dinner plates in dirt and filtering the parasitic creek water and incapable of digesting anything. Your stomach contracts and you're sweating and dehydrated trying to hike along and ignore the urgent need from within. And oh! Dear God, the horror of the privy. I've never actually been in one. Cast iron stomach of mine, and strength of will to match, I've always managed to avoid a trip to a privy on backpacking trips. The boys would come back bearing tales of outhouses holding the Devil's cauldron. Giant, man-eating arachnids lurk in the corners of the dark shithouse.
No; I will never go in a privy if I have to slit my very own throat on a pirate ship to avoid doing so. Capt. William Swashbuckle decrees anyone who soils his decks will walk the plank, and rather than face that fate I take my own life away from the macabre reality of the privy. The chances of that occurring will be even more dramatically low if I'm not suffering IBS.
Another, more plausible, threat is that you could be having dinner at your girlfriend's parents house for the first time and in the midst of a days-long battle against IBS. Her dad offers you a beer, and you don't want to seem uptight or like a person dealing with diarrhea, so you accept. Then they bring out some truly delicious, rich food, and you eat a healthy amount to be polite. A cold sweat comes over you and you realize you are not going to win a battle against your own body and excuse yourself. Stinking up the bathroom is better than having explosive diarrhea on the white-upholstered dining room chairs. IBS is a real bitch.
So, yeah, I'm scared of developing a shaky stomach. I feel like a ticking time bomb. Luckily my friends and I share an eighth-grade boy's interest in gastro-intestinal goings on. Deo and Drew to the rescue: a person can greatly reduce the statistically high chances of developing IBS by fortifying with psyllium. Psyllium is soluble and insoluble fiber with a texture like super-fine wood shavings, or tiny mouse hairs. Just a tablespoon and a half in eight ounces of water (swill while drinking so the fibers don't chunk up) three times a day and your likelihood of staving off chronic cramps and GI unpleasantries is rumored to soar.
This morning I went into the vitamin store to get a jar of my own psyllium. I thought it would be classier to get it at a supplement boutique than at a Rite Aid where it would be stocked next to cans of Ensure and packets of Metamucil. Because it's not a product exclusively aimed at geriatrics. No! It's a preventative supplement as intelligent a choice as Vitamin D or fish oil. There were no other customers in the store, but a very friendly sales person greeted me and I told her what I was looking for.
"Oh, I love that stuff," she said. "It's really important to stay regular."
"I'm regular!" I practically yelled back at her. "Uhh, but my roommate is a dietetics student and she is always telling me of the long-term health benefits of this stuff, and my other friend, who reads a lot about nutrition, swears by it. It's preventative." My face bore the look of someone who tells a drug store clerk she's buying the pregnancy test for a friend. Or this woman who would come weekly to the drive-in I schlepped burgers for in college, order truly obscene amounts of food, and explain to whoever served her that she was having a terrible week. It's cool, lady. I buy large cans of fiber and choke down water with the texture of wet paper so I won't have abnormal bloating and constipation/diarrhea for the rest of my life. Judge not, right?
In high school I babysat occasionally for parents at my church. The first time I sat for Oliver, age five, and Solveig, age one, their mother told me that Oliver needed to be in bed at eight and that "he needs to have a BM before he can go to sleep."
"Oh, okay, no problem. I'll make sure that happens," my reply.
As soon as she and the mister left I got on the phone immediately to my mother to find out what the hell a BM was.
"I don't know," she said. "Breast milk?"
"Very funny... I guess I'll ask him what it is."
Oliver didn't know. Over the evening I looked at the instructions list for medications BM might act as an acronym for. At some point it occurred to my mom and she called me, "Bowel movement."
"Ahhhhhhhh. Of course!" Should it have been obvious? Probably not. Only mothers and geriatricians are conditioned to think of the regularity of others' BMs. Thank God. So at bed time I sent Oliver in to poop or not to poop. I really wasn't interested, at five dollars an hour, in finding out what happened while Oliver was in the bathroom. He didn't update me. I put him to sleep with a story, shuddering at one more little death of a child girl's romantic vision of motherhood.
Because no matter how much you love someone, poop is never endearing. That's why I plan to keep where and when mine is produced under control to the fullest extent possible. That is why I bought psyllium.
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