|
DON'T DO
THAT (VOL. 1)
There are certain things that you really
shouldn’t do if you have
Crohn’s. I’m not talking about ingesting habañeros by the
handful or skipping your medication or drinking martinis
until your
colon falls out or something. In fact, I’m
not talking about
anything that has a direct bearing on the operation of your
gastrointestinal tract. Rather, I mean that there are certain
activities one can undertake in life that severely limit one’s access
to a restroom, which can be, shall we say, a bit of a problem.
Frankly, as excruciating and annoying as distention, cramping and other
Crohn’s symptoms can be, I think I’ll take pain over public
humiliation. Or, to put it in the most obvious way possible, I
prefer not to soil myself in public.1
As mentioned previously, I am always on the lookout for
restrooms when out in public. I look for the door marked
“Men” the second I
enter a restaurant; I stare at the maps in malls and airports until I
see the restroom icon, even if I have no immediate need to find
one.
But there are times in life when easy access to a commode simply isn’t
possible. Imodium, a wonder drug to be sure, can help slow things
down a bit and give those of us with time bombs in our gastrointestinal
tract a bit more confidence that the next explosion won’t come at a
particularly inopportune time. But the little green pills only
have so much power, and even if I took them by the handful, I’m not
sure I could ever feel fully assured that the urge would definitely not
hit. If you have Crohn’s, even if you pretty much OD on Imodium,
there is never such thing as All Quiet On the Southern Front.
That’s probably why the latest issue of the Crohn’s and Colitis
Foundation of America magazine features an ad for an in-car toilet
called Indipod. Actually,
it’s a whole bathroom kit:
there’s an opaque fabric bubble thing that opens when you plug it into
the car’s cigarette lighter plug, and a little potty training-sized
throne filled with a “perfumed fluid. As the ad says, “Indipod is
your sanitary sanctuary within your minivan or SUV. Even though
you’ll probably spill ‘perfumed liquid’ all over the place as you get
the damn thing set up on top of all the crap you have in the trunk of
your vehicle, and even though it will take a good 10 minutes to get
everything in place, cram yourself inside the ‘bubble’ and contort
yourself into position (with pants down), Indipod gives you dignity and
peace of mind.” At least, I think
that’s what it said. I may have made up part of that. But
this is a real product. No, I do not intend to purchase it.
Desperation has its limits.
But even if I did own an Indipod, there are still certain times when I
wouldn’t be able to use it, times when you simply can’t pop into a
self-inflating bubble or dash on over to the nearest bathroom, outhouse
or hole in the ground.
Take, for example, rock-climbing. For starters, it’s not exactly
the fastest mode of getting from point A to point B, or more
specifically, point A to point number two.
In fact, that’s sort of the appeal – the climb isn’t about the
destination so much as the journey (I think I read that on a
motivational poster somewhere), and about the physical effort and
mental focus required. But – and I say this from experience –
it’s easy to lose that focus when you need to use the restroom. Your
mental state quickly goes from Being One With the Rock to “Oh crap, I
have about 30 seconds to get off this rock and out of this *&%@!!
harness and into a bathroom before I burst.” But you certainly
won’t get anywhere quickly; going up takes way too much time, and going
down takes a bit of time as well, too. (That is, going down safely takes
time; one hopes that the belayer would understand that the
desire to be let down quickly is not actually a plea for assisted
suicide.)
Climbing harnesses are uncomfortable things, tight, constricting and
difficult to get out of. All by design, of course, all as you
would expect from something that is intended to keep you from plunging
to your death. With safety comes a bit of discomfort (I think I
read that on a poster somewhere, too), in this case in the groin, upper
leg, and lower abdominal areas. It’s this last part that most
concerns me — the harness can get uncomfortably around the gut, and
this can cause things to, you know, shift. . . . And in an instant, the
bliss and focus of climbing are gone, replaced by panic and
distress. I suppose big-wall climbers, the hard-core people
who spend all day or all of multiple days climbing up a large face,
must have some way of dealing with this, unless they wear Depends for
Climbers. There may even be a standard vocal warning to give the
belayer a bit of warning. I’d be interested to find out.
But I’m not interested in getting myself into the circumstances in
which I have use the commands. I prefer to get my rock fix in the
climate-controlled, short-route environment of the climbing gym, where
at the very least, after I get off the wall and out of the harness, I
can use an actual porcelain toilet and genuine paper TP, not a hole in
the dirt and whatever leaves are within arm’s reach.
Another thing you really shouldn’t do, but which I have done, is
act. They say all the world’s a stage, so I recall, but that’s
not true because there are certain times when you don’t want an
audience. For example, when you are using the toilet.
Hence, there are no toilets, at least no functioning ones,
onstage. That said, even if you’re completely in character, your
colon doesn’t know that, and, if you have Crohn’s, your gut is still
completely screwy and prone to doing whatever the hell it wants
whenever the hell it wants.
Directors tend not to like it when actors flee the stage in the middle
of the scene. They tend to read over the script looking for a
note that says, “Robin sprints off stage right” and see that, sure
enough, it doesn’t say that. In fact, it looks like Robin is
supposed to be onstage for the rest of the scene, and is about to be
ridiculed by Falstaff, so where the hell did Robin go?
Robin had to go, see.
It may be “The Merry Wives of Windsor” to
everyone else, but to Robin, or rather the person playing him, an actor
whose considerable skills as a thespian do not include complete control
over his gastrointestinal tract, it’s more like “The Tempest,” at least
in his gut. Things have become distinctly un-merry, and will be
for everyone else, too, if he doesn’t get to a toilet right
quick.
Robin had to go.
Couldn’t you tell from his brilliant improvised
line?
“Pray thee, Mistress Page, wouldst thou direct me to the nearest
commode? The ribald Master Falstaff will entertain yon audience
with droll repartee whilst I sprint offstage to let nature run its foul
course.”
Believe it or not, such cleverness will likely fail to appease the
angry director. They tend to live by the script; life with
Crohn’s, alas, is always unscripted.
We’ll discuss more things you shouldn’t do some other time. Also
high on the list: teaching and traveling. Which is scarier: the
prospect of leaving a room full of fifth graders alone while you sprint
to the little boys’ room, or battling ignorance of local geography,
custom, language and “secret police” protocol to find a commode in a
foreign land?
NOTES
1As I write this, David Sedaris is on NPR’s
“This
American Life,” telling of chatting with employees of clothing stores
who have, they say, found evidence of shoppers using changing rooms as
lavatories. Obviously, this is disgusting, but it strikes me as
downright weird. I mean, even if I had to go really badly, as has
happened at various times in my life – like, um, several times each
week – it would never occur to me to just pull down my pants in any
semi-private place. Wouldn’t you think that other shoppers would
notice the noise and the smell? And what do you do about toilet
paper? Just take an extra pair of Dockers from the shelf?
|
