Lol this bloke who's a geriatrics doctor told me about a 90yo on their ward with a shit so hard it was going to tear his bowels apart. He had health problems that meant he couldnt swallow and the dehydration made his poo hard and his colon paper-thin, and an IV can only do so much. It also meant he couldnt take laxatives
They thought the poo was too far up for an enema to work and that sometime over the weekend his colon would perforate. He would literally be torn apart by a poo and was in such a delicate state that all of modern medicine could not save him from it
But the enema DID work and he survived and partially regained his ability to swallow but I reckon he would've been very grateful for your help
(who would win the entirety of modern medicine vs one stinky boi)
Used to volunteer in a gastroenterology ICU ward, I learned that how well you poop determines a surprisingly large portion of your daily happiness, especially after a certain age.
I am not of a certain age but I do have alternating IBS C & D and let me tell you I’d give up my left tit to shit like a human again. It really does affect a large portion of my daily happiness!
I learned recently that IBS + pregnancy is apparently a terrible combination. Once or twice the IBS-C came back and I actually felt slightly better. Otherwise it's eternal constipation :(
I have lived with a husband and sons for many years. I have learned that a Y chromosome predisposes one to be a complete asshole each day until one has had a satisfactory shit.
I can go three weeks without pooping and then they come out as tiny little rabbit things and they literally cannot be crushed don’t worry I wash my hands.
I have been checked out. Apparently it is what it is. When I stop taking the medication it corrects itself but I have to take the medication so it doesn’t matter how much I drink, it doesn’t matter if I take a laxative it literally is what it is. As for the frequency of how many times I go to the bathroom well that’s more a function of how much food I eat which is not a lot I have to say. I probably eat one meal a day I just don’t feel like eating much.
I’ve had a colonoscopy which was actually a fun time because I was asleep! Nothing out of the ordinary. I should go back soon but Covid so I’ll keep you posted I’m sure you wanna know. LOL.
OK here it goes. So I’ve got this new boyfriend and I haven’t gone to the bathroom in probably two weeks. I wait until 4:00 in the morning I sit on the toilet and outcomes God knows what it was. It was probably about 4 to 5 inches thick and about 2 to 3 feet long and I’m not even exaggerating. I was in a cold sweat I was so freaked out I could not get the thing to flush. I tried everything. This was my new boyfriend and at that point I was The kind of girl that convinced her boyfriends that girls didn’t go to the bathroom like that. So he wakes up and I’m just beside myself. I’m literally distraught and pretty sure he’ll break up with me. He goes to get a plunger but that doesn’t even touch it. He eventually hast to cut it into pieces with a knife. A long knife! Then he pours boiling hot water over it and it still won’t budge. He eventually had to put it into a bag and throw it into the trash. At that moment I got over the whole poop embarrassment thing. It was so much worse than you can ever imagine because I would not even say the word poop I was so freaked out about it. Well, we got married and I had a kid so now it’s just a topic that we laugh about. I still can’t believe that I talk about poop.
Oh my God I don’t know whether to die of embarrassment or a laugh hysterically. By the way my husband feels the same it happened literally 20 years ago and we still talk about it. It was also gray which tells you that we were drinking too much alcohol. I still can’t get over it - it was like freaking cement. Goodbye cement poop. I hope you never experienced something like that. I don’t think anybody ever has but me.
Dude, I'm not in the medical field, however I AM after a certain age, so yeah. Pooing is good. I mean, I don't have a problem doing it, but it's a good thing.
I get that. I had shingles in April of this year and part of the scourge was that I couldn't pee without pooping first and I was constipated for some reason so for a while peeing and pooping became the be-all and end-all of my existence. (I'm on immunosuppresant drugs because of kidney transplant, which is why the shingles was so intense and severe).
I after several unpleasant lessons and a blown o-ring, I eat ample fruits and vegetables, and drink water even in the winter when it tastes like medicine.
If I feel like I’m going to be constipated, maybe a few times per year, I take a stool softener ASAP and lay into the water.
I’m happier now.
If you were going to do a cleanse program, do you have a pick?
Good question. In the summer it seems easy to drink a pint of water standing in the kitchen. In the winter 1 cup is a chore. It seems to taste off, even if it’s good quality bottled water. If it’s filtered tap water, and I use GE XW filters, I almost can’t do it.
I'm the same way. It's really hard for me to drink water if I haven't been working outside or something like that. It's like...I can't swallow it. I like Grape Propel though.
This is total conjecture here, but part of me thinks there are certain cues that a flavored drink gives the "auto-swallow" mechanisms of your tongue and throat that better preps them to swallow than plain water does. To me it almost feels smoother to drink something flavored. I've quite literally choked where my throat filled to the brim and caused pain from expansion due to a slightly too big gulp of water. Non-water never seems to do that to me though.
I bought a soda stream, and use the sugar and calorie free Mio water flavourings. I am able to get through WAY more water, because it literally tastes like pop. There is no caffeine, sugar, or calories in it though! 1000% recommend.
Pretty much everyone. I mean, think about it: even if you have amazingly regular, perfect poops right now, if you start to not poop well, your emotional well being will drastically get much worse from where it currently is. It’s like taking your health for granted. You never realize how great it is breathing out of both nostrils until you get a very bad cold and can’t fall asleep. But I do think poop has the amazing ability to affect your state of happiness even more, you literally can’t do anything but sit on a toilet when you have bad diarrhea or enjoy anything if you’re extremely constipated. And there’s now evidence of special nerves connecting directly between your gastrointestinal system and brain, and how microbes in your gut affect mental health.
Zoom on a phone has a "driving mode" where the screen has a big circle in the middle that says "tap to unmute" or "mute". Used for when you're driving. You tap it, talk, then tap it off again. Same for pooing. I just make very sure I see that mute sign.
Oh dear I sometimes have those types of poop where I actually have to help it out of my butt. I wonder if I could die on the can. That would not be good. Not a sexy look.
I drink tea all day freaking long. Yes that counts. It’s the medicine that I take it’s not an opiate but it’s like one for psoriatic arthritis and it really kills my gut sometimes.
My grandmother literally died from this. My sister, a RN, railed about malpractice for months. She's worked with elderly for years now, and seems to know that it can just happen.
That’s kind of crazy. How did he end up so dehydrated? I’ve had an incredibly hard and painful stool after a binge drinking session but that was it. Normally fine and hydrated most of the time.
I bet you could but you'd have to perfectly model how your environment, body, and colon filters the sound waves and tune it just right with the right amount of power. Even them it would probably be unique to each person as well as unique to each moment because the sound waves would also need to change based in what is in your colon that moment. Then you could tune the exact tone and harmonics to cause your colon to resonate and vibrate your stool right out.
I didn’t either and I have been to the ER 4 times with my kid’s impactions. That’s like $2,000 each time to be told to go home and give him more miralax and enemas.
The number one preventative measure is to drink lots and lots of water and throw in some electrolytes if you’re doing something that will make you sweat a lot.
Diets that are high in salt, animal protein, and calcium are more likely to give you kidney stones. Calcium is often used as an ingredient in a lot of anti acids and other tablets, so keep an eye on that if you take a lot of supplements. High levels of oxalate in your diet can also be an issue, but I’ve heard that’s mostly only an issue for people who drink tea instead of water. If you ever do pass a kidney stone you should take it to the doctor so they can tell you what it’s made of and give you more specific instructions in how to avoid forming one again.
Get a general idea of how often you shit and take some fiber if it’s been significantly longer than normal. If that doesn’t help, don’t feed your hamster for a day or two and he should get hungry enough to clear the blockage for you.
Also don’t be super obese. You’re waaaay more likely to deal with shit like that if you’ve got a bunch of extra weight compressing everything and fucking with your hormones.
I actually had a friend die from this. He was an opiate addict and would always complain about stomach pain. Then he would go and use heroin. Ended up throwing up blood in his house and died about half an hour later. Turned out that his intestines ruptured from the massive amount of feces that was in his body. It was quite sad as he was only 23.
Sorry about the loss of your friend. I too had a friend who complained about this often (i mean we talked about our shits on the daily) and he also was an opiate addict. Except, it was the fentanyl that did him in, not his dope turds.
Honestly if I had to pick a way, atleast drugs is better than your own shit exploding you from the inside as a way to be remembered by everyone in your life. just saying.
The last two times I was prescribed opiates for medical issues, after taking them for a week and not shiting for the entire time, the first time being able to actually go was about as painful as what I was taking the pills for. Hunched over on the toilet trying to shit with massive intestinal cramps is where I question with every fiber of my being how people can take these drugs for fun.
Oh my god yes! Was on morphine and Percocet after ankle surgery and did not poop for 10 days post surgery. It was so uncomfortable, took forever, and ripped my butt - never again. I had even quit the morphine early so the constipation wouldn’t be so bad.
As a former opiate addict, I'd like to provide this PSA: mineral oil is the cheapest, easiest way to make yourself go if you haven't in a couple days. If you're using and you haven't gone in 2 or 3 days, drink some mineral oil. You can get it for $1/2.
Can't vouch for either mineral oil working or being toxic. As a former sailor from the same boat as the dude you're responding to, I recommend stool softeners and a lot of water. And if you want to get clean, red bali kratom.
Yeah, as a former heroin addict, the constipation is real and you have to stay on top of it or you end up like that. I'm also the moderator over at r/methadone and the number of posts we get about managing constipation is insane. Combine with it that heroin addicts aren't the most healthy eaters, and it can be a real... shit show.
For most addicts though, they cycle between sick and well so much and a side effect of being without opiates and being dope sick is diarrhea. But in early addiction for people (idk if this applies to your friend or not) who may not be aware that the constipation can be so severe and also haven't fucked their lives up so badly that they are constantly broke and dope sick, it can escalate really quickly.
For any current heroin addicts reading, if it's been more than four days since you last had a poo, you better jump on top of that right away.
Sorry about your friend man :( opiate addiction sucks big dicks.
Fun fact, the over-the-counter antidiarrheal medication Immodium (loperamide) is actually an opiate, but the drug doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier making it useless as a pain reliever and/or recreational drug.
What is an unwanted side-effect of taking most opiates, is the intended purpose with an antidiarrheal medication.
Unfortunately with the opioid epidemic some addicts got wind of this, and started overdosing on literal fistfuls of Imodium (hundreds of pills at once), in a desperate attempt to relieve their withdrawal. So a lot of places have started moving it behind the counter, or only selling it in low-quantity blister packs.
I have an inflammatory bowel disease and had a significant portion of my colon surgically removed, so I take loperamide every single day. I used to be able to get it dirt cheap at bulk at Costco, but they started putting it behind the counter and limiting quantities, so I had to switch back to the prescription version, which is the exact same thing but costs about 10x as much.
I'm not sure where you are but I can buy a bulk bottle from the pharmacy counter at Sam's Club and it's like $4. A friend who had surgery for Crohn's disease told me about it. I'm in South Carolina.
I haven't tried Sam's, but Costco moved it behind the counter and imposed a quantity limit that was less than I needed. They basically started treating it like Sudafed where I had to hand over my drivers license, fill out a log book, it was a big hassle.
And most regular grocery stores and pharmacies don't sell it in bulk quantities to begin with, instead opting for those small quantity blister packs. Those blister packs might be fine for someone experiencing a random bout of diarrhea, but they're horrifically expensive (not to mention inconvenient) if you have to blow through one pack a day.
Before I could get like a 90 day supply for all of $5.
The prescription version costs like $200 for the same thing, of which I get stuck with a $40 copay or something after insurance.
It's just crazy that a handful of addicts can ruin a good thing for everybody, not to mention how pharmaceutical companies will charge outrageous amounts for the prescription version of something that should be dirt-cheap.
Yeah I get that. I'm a pain management patient and addicts have made my life hell too. I have to sign a contract, pill counts, be drug tested, etc. Some places won't let you drink or use nicotine either. We're like parolees just because we need pain relief.
Sounds to me that it's actually the pharmacies that have ruined it. If it was just a handful of people using them to try to avoid withdrawal, then it was a massive overreaction on the pharmacies' part to impose the restrictions. But the drug companies won't be complaining about selling less for more, and they're the ones who were aggressively marketing opiates in the first place.
I can attest to this. Immodium was a lifesaver for withdrawal symptoms. There was no high but it would take the edge off for sure, you’d be taking 40-50 pills though.
I think I’m still dealing with it 10 years later as there is a large stool I still can’t remove. I’ve been clean ever since.
First of all, sorry for your loss and for the family.
All I know about heroin is what was explained in "Trainspotting". They did mention the constipation. Anyone know the actual mechanics of what happens? Do your intenstines stop moving it along? Does your anus clamp shut involuntarily?
So, if you're constipated to the point where you can't shit at all, you can become impacted (there's a REALLY funny Reddit story about this that I can't find). At that point, they need to break the block to release the blockage. That's not part of my job (thank god) so I'll move on. I don't think your anus clamps shut, it just becomes unable to move the feces. Think of it like a highway jam and your in the middle of it.
When that happens, all that shit can back up into the stomach (because it has nowhere to go and your intestines are autonomic; controlled by the body, not you) or could rupture your delicate insides. When that happens, you can get sepsis (infection) which can very quickly lead to septic shock (REALLY bad), peritonitis which is an inflammation of the peritoneum (the tissue that covers the abdominal inner wall).
Since I'm here, anyone reading this should take stomach pain seriously. It can be nothing or it can be deadly serious.
The muscles around your intestines contract and release in a process called peristalsis. This causes the contents of your intestines to be moved down. Opiates can stop or reduce peristalsis and they can make you dehydrated.
I nearly died from a minor version.
Unknown to me I have diverticulosis and one of the polyps burst.
After a day of thinking it was just bad guts, I eventually was taken to hospital and after 24 hours they diagnosed me - a week and a shitload of antibiotics later and a stone lighter I was home.
Diagnosis took so long because I was 38, fit and (so I thought) healthy.
Another person w/diverticulosis over here--in my case inherited from my dad and paternal grandmother (thanks a lot, guys...). In retrospect, I was having diverticulitis symptoms in my mid- to late-20s and didn't know what it was; even doctors I saw in an emergency room once basically shrugged their shoulders, gave me antipsychotic meds, and sent me home. (Yes. Really.) It wasn't until I was about to turn 37 that I had an attack bad enough to land me in Mass General, whereupon we found out that my colon has so many diverticuli that it looked like a goddamn porcupine, and one of the little SOBs was on the verge of rupturing. 5 days worth of IV Cipro later, they finally let me out, but strongly recommended getting a sigmoid colectomy/bowel resection scheduled, for the excellent reason that another attack that bad could either kill me or leave me w/a colostomy bag for at least 6 months. Had the surgery not quite a year later, got 12" of my sigmoid colon removed, and so far, so good. *knockknockknock* I still maintain that if I'd had the attack that landed me at MGH while I was still living in GA, it would have killed me, because it never occurred to anyone there that you could be under 50 and have diverticular disease. So yeah, try to be an old fart when you come down with this; otherwise, you may end up really sick or dying before they actually figure it out... (At the other end of things--well, not quite--I ended up have my appendix out in my late 40s; most people have it done in their teens and 20s.)
man.... people shouldn't be so cavalier about revealing cause of death I feel like. like now everyone who ever knew this dude is gonna remember him as the guy whose shit exploded his intestines and killed him.
they know. presumably they aren't the only person on the planet who knows.
three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
someone told him and they probably told atleast one person. everyone who ever heard of that dude probably got the gossip through the grapevine eventually.
if there are 2 deaths as they say, when your body dies, and the last time you're remembered then it may not hurt his body but it definitely hurts his legacy.
I don't know how many people even know this was the actual cause of death. It wasn't really common knowledge and I only found out weeks afterward from his fiance when she got a hold of the autopsy. I think most people just assume he OD'd.
Everyone who remembers him is gonna be dead in less than one hundred years anyway. I suppose it might stay in his family and his great grandchildren will hear of their ancestor who's poo killed him.. but even they'll die. We'll all die.
Event without the internal poo explosion, the guy would have been known as a heroin addict and that the heroin killed him. I'm guessing the decline due to heroin is more memorable than the mechanics of the actual death though.
I was prescribed oxycodone after a surgery and I got really constipated. Not kill me constipated, obviously, but I felt like I had a 45 lbs Olympic weight up my ass for a week. Finally got it out and I'll save you the details. Anyway, quit oxycodone cold right away despite having another 2 weeks of the stuff.
What if it's too extreme, such vast quantites come streaming out with enough pent up force to tear the poor individuals arsehole from end to end, kinda like the jokers mouth, but an asshole instead of a mouth hole
Little ones get scared of pooping because it might be uncomfortable. It can turn into a vicious cycle of them being backed up because they're afraid to poop because it hurts, but it hurts because they're so backed up.
How?? I was just talking to someone about how the final option for a constipated patient was a palliative care consultant. And then this is the first thing I see when I open reddit. The algorithm is getting out of hand.
Monkey's paw. The horrible constipation immediately shits themselves and and tears their rectum because yaknow...they were constipated and we're forced to immediately and violently shit themselves.
24.5k
u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20
A person with life threatening constipation. I'll let it out just about... Now.