Dear Newsletter Readers,
I hope you are all well and welcome to this week’s edition of our newsletter.
This week I would like to share with you all an experience (a very painful one I might add that I would not wish on my worst enemy) that I had very recently that made me appreciate, even more than I already do, how much I am grateful to my wife for going through all the pain she went through to bear both our son and daughter, especially my daughter who weighed an absolute ton when she eventually came out.
The experience I had, although not quite as painful as giving birth (I’m really under no illusions), involved me laying on a hospital examination table in a hospital ER room with my knees bent and underpants lowered enough for the doctor that was tending to me to insert his fingers (several of them at once over-and-over again) into my anal passage to try to extract various large and small pieces of well impacted feces that seemed quite happy to stay where they were. As a person that is normally given to having a high pain threshold, but not given to being constipated, this was a whole new experience for me, so in addition to having a closer understanding of what the pain of giving birth must be like, I can also now empathise completely with people that do not have regular involuntary bowel movements.
My ordeal in the hospital lasted almost 4 hours (08:00~12:00) and at the end of it I was absolutely exhausted and literally shaking from all the pushing and deep breaths that I had contributed in order to allow the doctor to relieve me of most of the blockage in my colon. All the inserting of fingers pushed right up into my anal passage to tug and pull at the white powdery pieces of feces causing the blockage plus the enema that had to be given to make sure it all came out had really taken its toll on me; however, my story does not start and quite end here. The actual starting point for my story that explains why I ended up in the hospital ER room with a stool impaction goes back to when I went for my (least favourite way to spend 3 hours of my time) yearly health check.
Last Saturday, I went for my regular yearly health check-up (at a local hospital that I have been going to since the end of my thirties – I’m now in my late fifties) which should have been like it has been on every other occasion over the years leading up to last Saturday: very straight forward; however, that was not the case as one very different thing happened this time around.
This ‘different thing that happened’ was in the Ultrasound examination (the one where they put gel onto the upper part of your body and move a probe around to check out all your main internal organs). This examination is not so invasive; however, if you happen to get a medical operator that has rather a heavy hand then it can leave you with a few bruises and some aches and pains afterwards (which has happened to me on a few occasions in the past). This time around the person that examined me was not heavy handed at all, but rather quite new to her job. I took off my slippers and placed my valuables, as I always do, in the basket next to the examination table and then positioned myself onto the table as instructed.
The examination started and all seemed to be going well apart from the fact that the examiner was taking a lot of time, much more time than usual which concerned me a little. She seemed to be checking and then double checking everything she did and as you can imagine (if you have ever had an Ultrasound examination ) I was doing an awful lot of breathing in and out and turning left, right and looking up at the ceiling, so I was beginning to feel a bit tired. Then, I noticed that the examiner was looking at all 3 of her monitors quickly going from one to the other with the probe still in position on the left of my chest and she seemed to be concerned about something she could or couldn’t see. At that moment, she quickly stood up and without saying anything left the room very speedily. At first I thought she might have left quickly to see how many other people were waiting for a check, but then I had another thought which turned out to be correct.
Within a minute the examiner returned and about 20 seconds later in came a more experienced examiner and some conversation took place between them that I couldn’t quite catch, at this point I was beginning to panic a little and asked the more experienced examiner if there was problem, but I received no reply. After checking me a further three times, looking carefully at each of the 3 monitors, the more experienced examiner left the room and the less experienced once again went back to examining me. After she finished the examination I asked her if there was a problem and she replied that the doctor would discuss the results with me, so please wait until your consultation with him next week and she then quickly moved me on to my next test. I wanted to try to engage with her more, but already she had dismissed me as she wanted to move on to examining the next person.
After this experience the rest of the tests, except the barium swallow test (no matter how much vanilla essence they put into the barium swallow mixture it still takes a lot of effort to drink it) were a haze as my mind kept going back to the ultrasound examination. To be continued next week.
Until next week, please have a good weekend and keep safe.