Too much information

If you embarrass easily, don't read this post. If you have a weak stomach, don't read this post. If you prefer to keep Jim in a glossy, ideal picture in your mind, don't read this post. If you work with Jim and choose to continue reading, please be aware that this is not a Professional Post. You'll be seeing Jim in a new light.

For the three of you left reading, here we go. One of the things that no one tells you about chemo: it messes with your colon. I mean, hasn't poor Jim already had enough messing with his colon? His colon is now 18 inches shorter. He's now missing his cecum and his appendix. But chemo messes with...what comes out of your colon. Your poop. Not a good thing.

Some of you may know that Jim is a legendary pooper. What man isn't? But Jim's is almost a talent. He's got a flair for...poop. Back when we lived in Charlotte, I once complained to Jim that I hated it that I would have to poop around 10:00 am after I got to the office. An annoyance for a germaphobe, to say the least. Without hesitation, Jim explained to me that if I really didn't want to have to go to the bathroom at the office, I would need to adhere to a schedule whereby I moved my...appointment...by 15 minutes every day, until finally, I would be sitting in the privacy of my own home to poop. He made it expressly clear that this was a commitment - no going off the schedule, no tinkering with the times involved. I realized then that I was dealing with someone way out of my league.

I've never understood the whole bathroom thing. I think women, in general, feel very different about the bathroom than men. I don't get just sitting there. Waiting for something to happen. Um, wait outside the bathroom, getting stuff done, and right at the moment you need to go, sit down and go. None of this loitering around.

I've suspected for years that Jim's polite method of getting away from me, and later, from the kids, was going to the bathroom. I mean, come on. No one can sit there for that long without a purpose. Jim and I are on our fifth house. In each house, we've strived for two things: 1. Location, location, location. And 2. Two bathrooms. This is simply so that Jim can have his own place in which to set up shop. Our first house in Atlanta only had one bathroom. What a disaster. Moreover, the bathroom was adorned with two tiny folding doors. Jim replaced the doors within the first week of living there. He couldn't handle the dogs snuffing around the crack between the doors.

Our second house in Atlanta, though, became home to The Magazine Graveyard. The house had two blessed bathrooms - and the one upstairs was Jim's territory. I rarely went up there save for a cleaning every few months. That's when The Magazine Graveyard started. Jim would start looking around downstairs, and I would slowly realize that he was looking for something to read. So he'd finally end up with some sort of reading material, typically a Family Handyman or some such magazine. Jim had a massive drawer full of magazines that I called The Magazine Graveyard because once magazines worked their way upstairs, they were never welcome into mainstream circulation again.

For someone so smitten with ritual and "alone-time", you can imagine how hard it is to be pumped full of drugs that make him go either extra-fast (the most delicate way I can think of to say that), or not go at all. It's the Not Going At All that's the worst. It's painful. And the pain makes everything worse - other pains in the body, mentally he starts to wonder whether it's the cancer that's preventing him from going, and he's even more scrunched over because of the pain. He's on a new anti-pain medication that, lo and behold, makes things worse. One of his chemo drugs, the irinitocan, is notorious for giving people diarrhea, so they give atropine to combat it. So far it doesn't seem that Jim needs the atropine, especially since his anti-pain med seems to be doing the trick.

This whole commentary can be categorized under "Things no one tells you about cancer". Apparently it's not a subject many people are interested in addressing. Who can blame them? But this blog is a commentary on what's going on in our house. Plumbing is important in our house. Keeping things moving is essential to happiness and mental well being. Isn't it that way for everyone? I think it is, it's just hard to talk about.