Behold the B-Hole

Dear better than best friends,

Disclaimer: This post most likely constitutes oversharing. Oversharing is the wave of the digital future, if you didn’t know. It’s where ordinary people like me write on the Internet about how they got drunk last night, woke up pregnant and had to get an abortion. Or how they got drunk last night, barfed in a potted plant and slept in the tub for five days straight. Or how they got drunk last night, took pictures of their boobs and sent them to their boss’s nine-year-old son in an e-mailed titled “4 yr eyez only.” Anyway, since this is what all the kids are doing these days, I thought I might as well try my hand at it. If you are squeamish about unmentionable parts of the body, such as the anal sphincter, I suggest you read no further.

I haven’t written much about the mysterious illness that I contracted in January while on a visit to the West African nation of Mali. Here are the basics: I had a headache, then I had a fever, then I had a real bad fever, then the fever got way worse, then I ran into Princess Caroline of Monaco, then I played darts with her son Andrea, then I had bad poops, then I had real bad poops, then I was delirious, then I dreamed I was stuck in a mosquito net, then I woke up and found I actually was stuck in a mosquito net, then I cried, then I more bad poops, then I barfed in a village, then I pooped some more, then I ended up in a French hospital in the Malian capital of Bamako, then Dr. Rico made me take off my shirt, then she forgot to tell me to put it back on, then she gave me medicine, then I got better.

That sounds really fun, right? Great way to spend a vacation! And I lost 15 elbees! Bonus! Anyway, after the bacterial infection in my gut went away, I was left with something called post-infectious irritable bowel, which essentially means that you pee from your butt for another two weeks. All that pooping gave me a bad bum. The technical term for my affliction is “anal fissures.” Yes, I had massive tears in my behind. Like someone jammed an empty two-liter soda bottle covered in razor blades up there and yanked it up and down. I wish I was exaggerating. I am not.

This is an anal fissure.

So pooping became the thing I most dread every day. My gastro doc told me that the best thing to hasten the healing process was to have soft poops. Um, let me get this straight. So after weeks of peeing from my butt, you want me to go back to that? HELL to the NO. I was not going to be enjoying a diet of Metamucil, Ex-Lax and castor oil. Not this kid. No thanks. Then the only solution to my agonizing b-hole was to just let it heal on its own. More than two months later, my b-hole problem had still not gone away and every trip to the bathroom meant that I became a screaming holy terror.

Since I like spending $40 every time I see a specialist (thanks awesome Free Press health insurance), I figured it was time to go see a doc a little more familiar with the general area of the b-hole. Of course the moment I made the appointment, I knew that my bum issues would be cured by the time the visit rolled around, and I was right. When I checked in at the colo-rectal doc’s office yesterday, I sheepishly told the receptionist that this would be a short visit since my problem was mostly rectified (ha!).

Within a nanosecond of my arrival, the world’s meanest nurse called me into the examination area. I tried to explain to Nurse Ratched that, ha, ha, funny thing, my, um, fissures pretty much went away on their own. She could care less. She just scribbled something down and left. About 23 seconds later, Nurse Ratched returned, this time with the colo-rectal dude and some learner doctor who told me he was really glad to meet me. Uh, yeah, me too.

This is the nurse at the colo-rectal doc’s office.

After I explained the sitch to the doc, he decided he’d still like to have a looksie. Right. So Nurse Ratched held up a sheet and the butt doc told me to pull my jeans and my unmentionables down to my knees and kneel down on this weird kneeler bed contraption (old people will know what I’m talking about) and put my elbows on the table. As I stressed over the fact that I was wearing somewhat embarrassing underwear for a woman my age, Nurse Ratched flipped a switch and the kneeler bed raised up off the ground. At the same time it was sailing towards the ceiling, the bed began to tip so that my head was lower than my bum. Then I felt a breeze pass over my behind as Nurse Ratched took away the sheet and exposed my nether regions to the doc and his note-taking junior sidekick.

Now this might be humiliating to some readers, but to me, nothing could feel more normal and humanizing than having my arse splayed above my head while the doc, his finger probing the inside of my sphincter, asked me to “bear down like you’re having a poop.” I gave him my best third eye wink, trying not to push too hard so that anything might, err, escape. One more poop simulation and then I was off that table in a hot minute. Nurse Ratched yelled at me for trying to exit the table before it had come to a complete stop, but I didn’t care. I’ll take the yelling before I’ll take a cold metal speculum in the poopshoot.

As I had already diagnosed, I was making good progress and the anal crevasses were nearly gone. Good thing, because summer is coming and I don’t want anything getting in the way of my hot new look:

This will be me from the front.

This will be me from the back.