Thank God I am Constipated

(The following document contains descriptions of common bodily functions that are rarely discussed. You have been warned…)

Knowing that I am literally sitting upon about three pounds of fully digested food that is in the natural form required before it can exit one's body forever, I find so much joy and contentment that I can barely contain myself. I know at first glance this must sound like the ramblings of a madman -- and I certainly do fit that description -- but my use of this extended expression is far more poignant and appropriate and wonderful, and I certainly would be pissing a rainbow if I physically could.

I'm not sure what adjective is appropriate for describing what I have endured the last 8 or 9 days: catastrophic, herculean, metamorphic, life altering, otherworldly, are some that come to mind. None appropriately describe in a single word the near death incident, wrapped in a Catch-22 and surrounded by quotation marks formed by pounding the words “That’s-fucking-unbelievable” into the shape we all recognize by using a 5 pound sledge.

In the last 7 days I have made 49 trips to the bathroom to eliminate poop. The worst day yielded 35 trips, and that coupled with the following day represented 48 hours without sleep and 10 pounds dropped in those two 24 hour periods.

If I am ever out horseback riding and find myself in the awful position of being face down on the ground and dragged by the horse through thistles for two or three miles, I will quietly rise, brush off the dust, have a drink of my favorite tequila, and call it a day. I won't even deem that it is worthy enough to put into a new blog post.

There is a trend in Hollywood to utilize certain newer medicines for something other than the purpose that they were initially designed for. The It drug among the rich and shameless these days is a derivative of what is known as GLP-1. Ozempic has been in the news for some time now due to its propensity to encourage weight loss. These drugs were originally designed to help people with diabetes lower their A1C, which is an average measurement of blood sugar over a 90 day period.

I am a diabetic. My diabetes has been under control for some time now with the use of standard prescription medicine. A brutal series of surgeries that I had last year caused me to bounce around between losing and gaining weight. The end result was an A1C that was bordering on dangerous. My endocrinologist decided to try me on Mounjaro, which is very similar to Ozempic. Its goal is to reduce those pesky blood sugars, permitting me an opportunity to breathe a bit easier – for the first time in several years. My doctor cautioned me that gastrointestinal upset was the primary side effect of this drug, and she told me to watch out for any signs that I might be having a negative reaction.

We all have the opportunity to make choices in our life to help us achieve whatever personal goals we may be fighting for. But to see these drugs being used with all caution thrown to the wind by an elite group of people who do not have diabetes and are piggybacking on top of me and others like me to use this drug specifically for its side effects is repugnant and morally offensive.

I find this level of narcissism to be distasteful at a level I have not observed before. You want an ‘E’ ticket ride at Disneyland? You want to glibly try to get the natural rhythm of your body to temporarily surrender to a new and extremely dangerous drug? Do you question the normal and natural way God decided our body chemistry to function? Do you think your money can purchase you a private audience with Mother Nature -- and try to convince her that you want to use this just for a little while, just until I’m beautiful again?

Let me show you the true costs that will be paid in an effort to lose weight so that you may run with the pack once again. I cannot, even in the course of an essay, make you understand how much I despise people like this.

While the primary method of weight loss is detailed in the instructions as a loss of desire to eat more food, there is a tainted dimension that comes along with this. This dark side is enough to strip away your life for good and forever, as it almost did to me.

Five days after the first injection, I developed brutally violent diarrhea. If I hadn’t fully documented the instances of trips to the bathroom for my doctors, this would have disappeared into a blur of unrecognizable pain and anguish.

48 hours without sleep, almost nothing to eat, drinking as much as I could to try to replenish the vital fluids I lost: here is an accurate assessment of the worst of the days:

10-17-25

12:50 am                                 7:05 am                                  4:20 pm                              6:56 pm

1:00 am. Imodium #3             8:25 am                                  4:30 pm                              7:40 pm 

1:40 am                                   8:30 am                                  4:40 pm                              9:56 pm 

1:55 am                                   10:30 am                               5:25 pm.                             10:16 pm

2:10 am                                   11:15 am (3)                         6:00 pm                              10:58 pm

5:30 am                                   12:15 pm                               6:10 pm                              11:00 pm

6:00 am                                   3:15 pm                                 6:25 pm                             

6:06 am                                   4:00 pm                                 6:40 pm

6:50 am                                   4:10 pm                                 6:50 pm

Total = 35

Both Phyllis and I knew that I should be on IV fluids to re-hydrate my body but I could not figure out how to get me into a car and to the hospital without permanently soiling the inside of the vehicle. Since I could expect to be compelled to make a trip to the bathroom in anywhere from 4 to 10 minutes and the adult diapers that I was using were not designed for my condition, I could not come up with a reasonable alternative to keep me plugged up or to at least prevent me from damaging the car. It's not a joke to have porous material like a car seat or a carpet saturated with bodily fluids – and mighty dangerous ones. The WHO deems human waste to be one of the most toxic substances on the planet.

While I'm usually pretty good at thinking through a situation and coming up with a viable plan, this one had me flummoxed; I would not let Phyllis take me to the hospital. That means we had to develop a plan to rehydrate me as quickly as possible at home because I had all other factors going against me: age, health issues outside of this nasty situation, and my deteriorating bodily functionality.

We just endured. Phyllis was rightly angry with my insistence of not attempting a trip to the ER. Eventually, my body put the brakes on, and slowly but surely returned to a somewhat normal rhythm.

The doctor who prescribed this medication was angry that I stopped. In the three instances that I have had negative outcomes from different doctors and different procedures, it appears as if they all had the same temperament and desire to rebrand my efforts as nothing more than “an unusual outcome.”

This is what doctors do when they don't want to accept responsibility for the severe negative reaction to a course of medicine. I have seen this occur enough times to realize that doctors do not like to shoulder the liability when their patients travel down a road with unforeseen consequences. It has shaken my confidence in doctors that I would otherwise trust with my life. Unfortunately, this is part and parcel of life itself -- and something we cannot prepare ourselves to face because we only see what is supposed to have been the good result.

Too many cliches are floating around in my overwhelmed brain right now. I survived (actually “we”, since my wonderful wife has been by my side through all of this) more serious episodes than this – spending 6 months with a plastic bag glued (literally) to my abdomen with 3 inches of my small intestine depositing waste material into it around the clock, comes to mind. Had it not been for our unshakable belief in God, neither of us would have survived THAT episode. Not an exaggeration. We had approached the end of the very thin string binding both of us to life. We could not face another week of waking up at two in the morning to deal with a bag leaking its vile contents all over me, the bed, and our world.

One piece of advice from a wonderful doctor of mine comes to mind. He said that we usually will forget about the pain after six or seven months -- our brain cannot continue to relive it over and over again without having a severe negative consequence to our lives (uh, we die).

You move on, or go crazy. You move on, or the ugliness that once enveloped you, slowly squeezes the life out of you and everyone else in the room. You move on, or you die.

There are no other options – if you don’t both believe in God and are unable to place yourselves in His hands for the length of the journey -- what you believed as “your formidable internal strength” will disappear like a fart in the wind. You best trust me on this one. Been there, done that too many times to question the notion of faith and its ability to help you survive. Life is hard, it is never fair, and it always tries to suck the goodness out of you at the worst possible moment. But, and this is a big BUT, you will have an infinite number of moments (however brief) of pure, unfiltered joy by observing the world God has created just-for-you. These moments will happen every day if you let them. They occur when the natural world intersects with your path in it, when you let go of your struggle to survive and embrace the beauty of what is literally right in front of your nose.