The Day I Carried Poop in my Bag ALL day

As previously mentioned, I have Ulcerative Colitis. Every once in a while, I get a flare-up and things get bad. How bad? I have never given birth before but based on videos I have seen and stories I have heard, I feel that I am more than prepared pain-wise because of this illness. That's how bad my stomach cramping gets. I even do Lamaze breathing when they hit.  Also, when I get a flare-up, its the only time, like ever, that I don't want to eat. This is how those around me know I am sick. It takes a lot for me not to eat. I love food. But when I start to fear it because of the pain it causes me, its time to see the doctor. And with these flare-ups, even with eating little to nothing, I am still in the bathroom double-digit times a day. Not okay.

Anyway, this recent flare-up has been the worst I have ever had in my life. It started like all my other flare-ups had. I called the doctor and got a prescription for the medicine that I usually get for this. Usually I take this medication and am healthy in a week or two. This time around, a month passed and I still was miserable. (This accompanied by my broken foot was not a fun combination.) After trying another new medication and still not improving, the doctor requested that I submit a stool sample to see if there is another underlying infection. I said I would be in the next day to pick up the kit for this test.

This isn't my kit, but very similar.

The following day I went to the hospital to pick up this kit which included a special toilet bucket for the "sample" and 4 vials for the "sample." And by sample, I obviously mean my poop. Duh. They said I could do the test at home and bring it to the lab when I was done. I didn't want to have to transport my own poop on the train and around town so I waited at the doctor's office for about a half hour to see if I could just poop there, fill my vials and bring it down to the lab. No dice. I guess I would have to take the kit home, and take my "sample" in the next day. I will spare you the details of how I had to collect the samples. But lets just say I had to take what was in the bucket and put it in the vials. Got it? Yeah, not a pleasant experience. At all.

Here's where it gets a little tricky. I couldn't go back to the hospital to drop off the sample at the lab until AFTER work the next day. So I packed up the vials in their Biohazard bags, bagged them again and again and put them in my school bag. They sat there all night long. I brought them with me to work the next day. That's right, I had vials of my own feces with me at work. ALL DAY. Totally gross. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I kept checking and double checking that the sealed vials in the sealed bags that were double bagged would not leak. After all, there was poop literally sitting in my bag. What if someone had wanted to mug me? They certainly would have been in for a rude awakening. Would have served them right. But that didn't happen. Finally at 5:15 I was able to drop it off at the lab.  I felt bad for the lab tech who had to open those vials that I am sure had been flopping around all day.  Once I got rid of the samples, I felt like I automatically smelled better and felt cleaner.  I was just hoping that I didn't perform that test at home and carry around my own poop all day for nothing. Even though I didn't want to have something worse wrong with me, I wanted the doctor to find something so at least the test was worth doing. And it was. I had a serious bacteria growing in my stomach and colon that was making me even sicker. He prescribed a new medication (number three of the month) and I finally had some hope that I would start feeling better. Which I did. So I am finally feeling better again and although I was miserable and sick for almost two months, I got a good story out of it.