My health is maybe getting worse?
I dunno. So many things happen to me that seem bad but then they pass and I feel silly for having gotten all worked up and worried about it.
But(t) twice in the last 24 hours, I have felt the need to defecate but when I stood up to go do so, something shifted and the need became VERY VERY URGENT.
As in, the main event started happening before I had found my seat.
In other words, I started pooping immediately and had to make a dash to the toilet to prevent something very nasty from happening.
I’ve never really been good at euphemism.
And another thing : the same sort of thing happens with urine too. I feel my bladder is full and my receptacle is full so I have to go to the ensuite to have a civilized pee.
And when I stand up or move, the urine sloshes against my urinary sphincter and a little bit leaks out.
And that seems to be getting worse too. A few times recently it’s been more than just a little pee. It’s been more like a squirt of it.
Thank God I was wearing pants both times.
I’d rather wet myself a little than pee on the floor. 🙁
These eliminatory misfires have me quite worried that something spinal is going wrong. I was, after all, instructed to go to the ER if I experience incontinence or an inability to pee, and I am coming close to the incontinence on two fronts.
And yet, I don’t really wanna go to the ER. It’s super boring and stressful and my symptoms are nebulous enough that I am positive my issue would score very, very low on the triage scoreboard and so it would take forever for them to get to me.
And of course, like I always bring up in these situations, there is the lurking socially anxious fear of going to the ER and enduring the entire process only to be told they could find nothing wrong with me and I just wasted everybody’s time.
And I get the whole “better safe that sorry” thing and I know whatever medical person was dealing with me would tell me that I did the right thing in coming in, but that would not make a lick of difference to my socially anxious self.
I would still feel horribly guilty and embarrassed.
So I am in my usual position of hesitation where I know I probably should go but I am not ready to go yet and all I can do is wait and see if things get bad enough to motivate me to go to the ER or UC.
I sure hope that the fecal half of the issue is just some passing thing. A bug, or a touch of food poisoning, or just a weird reaction to something.
The urinary part is bad but not “poop yourself in public” bad.
I could also make an appointment with my GP, Doctor Chao. But that would involve a delay of at least a week and that’s too long to wait.
And even then, it would be a freaking phone appointment.
As far as I can tell, I don’t have any other symptoms of note. I don’t feel sickly and my appetite is fine and my insides are being pretty quiet.
But I am on alert anyhow. Things can get far worse quite fast and I may have to do another dash to the toilet
And that’s not easy with legs like mine.
I just want to make it through doing Denny’s.
I can fall apart after that.
More after the break.
Not falling apart yet
Back from Denny’s. So far so good.
One thing I forgot to mention earlier was that I have also been experiencing mild pain when I defecate.
It sort of feels like I am pushing out something rough and spiky. As if my feces had fragments of walnut shell or somesuch in it.
Pretty sure it doesn’t, though.
And then afterward there is a lingering burning sensation in both the rectal and perianal regions. It’s quite unpleasant.
But I must stress that this is mild pain. These are fairly faint sensations.
Trust me, if it hurt a lot, there would be no question as to going to the ER. I’ve been in that situation, though with urination not defecation, and you wanna bet I hit the ER.
God, that was horrid.
So add that to the running tally of ways my body is being weird.
It’s so hard to find an island of peace and calm where I can center and ground myself when I never know what is going to go wrong next.
I am trying to convince my deeper self that I am safe and it can let down its guard and let me relax and just live my life without all these neurotic second guessing and futile attempts to exert absolutely control over outcomes.
That’s not possible. There are too many variables that you can neither predict or control. And if you take trying to control outcomes too far, you end up with a life like mine which is toxic to the soul and a miserable little cage to live in, but it’s predictable.
Far better to work on getting used to handling the unexpected.
I mean, don’t stop me if you’ve heard this, but you can’t control the world. All you can control is how you react to it.
I will never be a person who likes surprises in the real world. That’s a fundamental part of my temperament.
But surprises don’t have to be utterly devastating events that leave me shocked and reeling like a bomb just went off next door either.
Plan A is no surprises. But there has to be a robust and flexible plan B, and that plan B has to be to rise to the occasion and deal with the situation with strength, intelligence, and maturity so that the new problem is handled, not just fled from.
That’s the only plan that makes practical sense. After all, having only one plan with no contingencies is extremely shortsighted and inefficient.
And I am all about efficiency.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.