My Shit Stool

In our bathroom we now have a shit stool. It’s a lovely golden thing with fringes around the middle that the cats like to tear off. It’s cushiony and has a neat pattern on it for me to stare at in flights of fantasy if I need to.

It used to reside in our living room, in front of the wooden rocking chair with the woefully thin blue cushion. It never matched the rocking chair but it sorta matches our ugly gold sofa and it theoretically served as a great place to rest your feet if one was ever to lounge in the rocking chair with a good book and a stiff drink. I rarely ever did anything more than rock myself back and forth when I would cry in our last apartment, so I could sort comfort myself and not wake my partner up by crying in the same room. The foot rest seemed superfluous when I was crying as well as when we were moving for the second time in a year last year, but for some reason, we never got rid of it.

Now that golden stool resides in our bathroom. I bought the wrong color “oops” paint at Home Depot and we didn’t prime the walls before we painted them, so the bathroom has a rather morgue green hue to it. However, that is only relevant to this story to highlight the fact that this stool does not match the bathroom anymore than it matched its old mate, my rocking chair.

Whether or not it matches anything is irrelevant overall though, because the sole purpose of the stool in the bathroom is to help me move my own stool better, more efficiently, and with as few anal fissures as possible.

I learned about the shit stool when I was discussing my current pain problems with my physical therapist. At the time, it felt as though my bowels drove a Mac truck through my anus and left shred marks to prove it. Shitting was just as painful as sitting and it was a fascinating topic of discussion for that day’s therapy session. Turns out, my beloved physical therapist has a) heard of this problem before and therefore wasn’t openly repulsed by what I was describing and b) had some possible solutions in mind. Hell, she even had a diagram to send home with me that shows the proper 90 degree angle at which one should sit in order to most productively shit!

She also discussed the possibility of trying pelvic floor stretches via my anus (that reminds me, I probably should write about what happens in PT!) and getting a stool for the bathroom to help me achieve that perfect angle. For the meantime, I opted out of the rectal stretches in favor of the shit stool (my words, not hers).

Being either frugal or cheap, I did not want to rush out and buy anything as unglamorous as shit stool (I’d much rather spend the money I saved on one of my post-BI shopping trips.) so I went home and thought deep thoughts on the crapper as nothing came out of my bowels. Finally it occurred to me to use the plush, padded, mismatched stool we already had in our living room and see how that worked out.

For awhile, all I could do was shoo our white cat, Jezzabella of the stool, since she now thought it belonged to her, and maneuver it in front of me before I sat down on my throne. I would place my feet upon it as I sat there trying to expel a trickle or two of urine, since nothing was coming out of my little Wal-Mart.

My partner and I have taken to calling my anus my little Wal-Mart when the stores around here got the less than brilliant idea to change their symbol to what my beloved claims, looks like an anus. Initially I did not agree that’s what the symbol looked like, but that was before I spent so much time contorting myself to look at my own anus for cracks, tears and fissures and to apply the once or twice daily ointments to that area. Then I began to agree with my lover that Wal-Mart’s new symbol and my anus do bear a striking resemblance! Although I swear Wal-Mart has an easier time moving shit out of its orifice, err, store than I do.

It never ceases to amaze me what you can learn to talk about and become comfortable with in a relationship, since I’ve never discussed this part of my body with anyone so openly and frequently as I do now!

Even though I couldn’t shit for a while, I rather liked the feeling of having my feet propped up when I peed. It gave me a more comfortable chance to impersonate Rodin’s "The Thinker", as I tried to expel something, anything, from some lower hole in my body.

Eventually the Miralax and the three stool softeners I take each day kicked in and something festering inside me for entirely too long serrated it’s way out of my colon and my anus. And I was somewhat more comfortable as it tore slightly less of my ass part now that my perch perfected that sought after angle of release.

The shit stool doesn’t stop the anal tearing and it certainly isn’t something I’m going to take with me everywhere I ago, but now that I am used to it, I find it much easier to crap with it’s help. Plus, since many of my medications make me constipated, and I know it takes a day or two for the Miralax to work, I am rarely caught off guard with the need to shit. When I am, I now try to replicate the 90 degree angle by sitting on the throne and pushing my knees up as high as they will go while simultaneously trying to balance most of my lower weight on my tippy toes. This usually results in very sore toes, wobbly legs and an occasional cramp in my arches…a small price to pay for an easier crap I’d say!