Excruciating

Nov 08, 2013

Ugh.  Well that's two days of my life I'll never get back.

I've struggled with constipation even before my surgery.  Normally, it's nothing more than a mild discomfort.  I had one rather painful (and ill-timed--I had to leave a conference because of it) bout back in June, but really, by and large, the situation has been manageable.  I just had to take some meds and in 12 hours (or so) all is well.

Until this weekend.

I was feeling a bit blocked midweek.  I'd seen my doctor (one of my docs) for a follow-up visit on Tuesday and she'd asked me a battery of questions--one of them:  do I get constipated?  I told her yes and she wrote me a prescription for Dulcolax, which isn't available over the counter in Qatar.  So on Wednesday night, thinking I should probably do something about the situation, I popped a pill and went to bed.

I woke up Thursday morning with some rumbling in my tummy, but nothing overly alarming.  So I got dressed and went to work.  I wasn't there an hour before that rumbling turned into the need to go.  Only I couldn't.  I'd cramp and cramp and cramp, yet when I went into the bathroom, nothing would happen.

I dealt with this for a couple of hours before telling my boss I needed to go home.  The urge to go to the bathroom was growing, as was the discomfort.

But going home didn't solve anything.  I spent two hours straight in the bathroom Thursday afternoon with little to show for it.  The cramping was literally twisting my lower body in knots and was exhausting me.  I was practically crying because of the discomfort.

This continued into the evening.  I couldn't sit.  Every time I walked, the cramping got worse.  The only way I could be comfortable at all was by lying on my side.  I went online (standing, stooping over my laptop) to see how Dulcolax supposedly works.  It's a stimulus laxative--it's supposed to coax movement in the bowels.  Well...that was certainly happening.  But it wasn't enough to get me to actually push past the blockage.  So I took some Miralax, thinking perhaps I needed to soften things up (I can't believe I'm writing about this...), and went to bed.  The following morning I felt a little better.  But I still didn't have a BM and the longer I was up, the more painful it got. 

I don't know if I can describe how uncomfortable I was.  It was far worse than any post-surgery pain.  The lower half of my body felt swollen and inflamed, and the cramping was basically non-stop.

I waited until 5:00pm and took another dose of Miralax.  Finally, at just past 8:00pm, I went into the bathroom and had success.  That made all the difference in the world.  This morning I feel like a new woman.  But man--that is nasty!  I wouldn't wish that kind of pain on my worst enemy.

On a positive note, I've lost two pounds as a result of this ordeal.  I can think of easier ways to do it.

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