Obstruction, Poop Dust, Mussolini and the Nuclear Option

Day After Chemo April 14
What amazes me is the amount of logic that fills your streaming responses to life’s givings.
Rex
Hi Rex,
No fear Brother-am ok this AM. My regimen today is:
Hang upside down in some configuration from 5-15 minutes at regular intervals to build strength and ability and promote draining.
Allow 45 minutes every 4 hours for drug interaction with pain meds.
Drink 2 quarts of water.
Pee.
Work at my desk as I can-time limited due to ergonomic incompatibility of furnishings with two sacks full of fluid and a flooded shaft.
Buy a large jock strap.
We are starting chemo with a less an aggressive regimen that originally specified and will monitor kidney function, becoming more aggressive over time until the disease is dead.
Remember, trenches and buckets drain the shaft and empty the bags. See you soon.
Your dedicated and unworthy sibling,
M
As the week progressed my frustration and suffering reached a pinnacle. Just as in each of the past few weeks, the disease presents new frustrations each week. So it was the night of the fourteenth. Abdominal pain increased by the hour. I too conservatively administered laxative and was up through the night. Around 2 am I stationed myself in the bathroom. I attempted to shit in the tub and sink; I stood over the stool, set backwards on the stool, sideways. I made a pad out of towel and masking tape. I attempted a gymnast’s move, balancing on my hands. I tried spreading. By the early am I was delirious. Using the Childs ear syringe buried in the back of the cabinet for these past decades became a shallow deliverer of tap water enemas and a gentle probe until Vanessa caught me with it.
In the still of the early morning, excruciating pain that went through all of the drugs at reasonable dose like they were nothing, I again found myself struggling with the Nissan factor. The pallets were backing up again, must be that Mussolini thing in the back of my head that has made me timid on this matter. I remember reading of Mussolini enjoying watch men die from drinking too much laxative, pumped down them by the dictator’s goons, and the victims subsequently shatting themselves to death in horrible fashion. I thought all those years Mom was addicted to exlax and what a strange addition that had to be. I couldn’t figure it out. Perhaps she was like me, obligated to take them daily. Now it was clear, I had a bowel obstruction and so it was I turned to the nuclear option. While my previous experience with this chemical magnesium citrate had been a mild encounter now it would earn its name.
While waiting for its effects to become evident, pacing my 6x3 foot cell I tried to understand how this could happen. I concluded that the narcotics for pain react with waste product and deliver a very dry product. Often I have made it to the loo only to cut forth with a gaseous blast of poop dust. Prior to cancer poop dust was not in my vernacular. With the narcotics often deadening the longest passings, I was truly surprised the first time I saw the dark chocolate covered chips and specs about the bowl. After 58 years of nothing strange on that end here was another anomaly. ‘So’ I thought, ‘I really am getting old.’
The nuclear option must be taken with copious amounts of water. I thought 48 ounces were enough, and for me it was woefully short. I passed the blockage about 24 hours after first signs. It was painful. Within two hours a couple of follow up events gave me new respect for the concoction. This would be the last time I would chance a BO. No more gambling or delaying the Nuclear Option (NO). No action in 24-the NO, not enough action, the NO. In retrospect, I wonder if I had simply prevented the constipation pain to begin with I might have had a lot more rest these past 160 odd days.
Saturday and I look back at the worst week yet, typically so at my own hand. However we now are amending routines. The suffering led me to a better understanding of the signs my body puts up, warnings to guide me. Going into the new week I will have a strong, regular laxative regimen to keep things moving. This alone alleviates a lot of pain that is so severe and generalized it is difficult to describe or isolate.