Cut for intestinal TMI
Cut for intestinal TMI. No, really, this is probably way more than you want to know about my gastro-intestinal tract.
My mother has had stomach upsets (she calls them “attacks” when she’s being polite and “shit attacks” when she’s being crude) on a daily basis her whole life. It is only now, at the ripe old age of 69 that she has discovered that she’s allergic to gluten. I would have NEVER put up with having diarrhea every day without getting to the bottom of things (ouch, sorry for the bad pun there). I was totally surprised to find out that she had. All this time I thought she lived in the bathroom because she had a small bladder.
Luckily, I inherited my father’s cast iron stomach. I’ve gone as long as a decade between cookie tossings, and I seldom get the runs. (This is one of the reasons why last year’s Post-Pennsic food poisoning was such a nasty surprise, my belly just doesn’t misbehave like that.) However, when things start to go wonky with my intestinal tract these days, I try to listen to the wisdom of my gut.
I never really make the connection between stress and my bowels until I moved out on the Wasband and lived with my Evil Twin Skippy. Skippy has anxiety disorder, and I remember him once telling me that one of the effects of anxiety is that “Everything must go! Right now!” That was one of those lightbulb moments for me. I realized that the wasband’s all night sessions sitting on the throne often occurred on nights when we’d had a fight earlier in the evening. And that my daily dashes to the bathroom between second and third periods during my second year of teaching were probably due to the stresses of working for an asshat principal that I’d developed a completely irrational fear of. When I developed heartburn when I was working for Bossy Lady, I recognized it as my digestive system trying to get my attention. “Hey, we’re stressed out here, what do we need to do to get your attention?!?!”
I was feeling pretty stressed out about faire this weekend, for a variety of reasons. In my head all the cat herding and managing the endless details required to make things run smoothly was feeling more like work than fun. There have been so much bad news floating around about faire and the money troubles left over from the Spring run. I just wasn’t excited about being at CTRF as either a patron or a participant. I wasn’t loving the new faire layout, which moved our encampment away from our prime spot near the entrance and privies (most people’s first stop once they get in the door) to now being at the ass-end of the faire (you have to walk through the whole site to get to us). And the weather forecast was wrong, Wrong, WRONG for opening weekend. We didn’t need rain, we needed beautiful weather. And work hasn’t exactly been stress free either. So yeah, I was a mental mess going into the weekend.
And my gut knew it. In the middle of doing the dishes on Saturday it gave the warning gurgle. I sat for a minute, listening, and knew what was coming. I do appreciate the fact that my body usually gives me an early warning of nastiness to come (Bad taste of bile in the mouth? You’re going to barf. Burning in the gut? Might want to find a toilet and get comfortable.) I excused myself, and told Ilsa that I was going to have to go, erm, pray for a bit.
And it wasn’t a pretty sight. I’m hoping that unnatural color was due to the Red 40 in the Gatorade I’d been chugging all day and not due to something more scary. I was hoping it was a one time thing, that I'd gotten it out of my system. But no, I was halfway to faire on Sunday when I had to pull off the highway to make an emergency pit stop at McDonald’s. And there was a second, less drastic trot to the privies later on Sunday. And again with the ick this morning. Enough already!
So here I am, writing up this post in my head at work about how stressed out I am and how it is manifesting itself, when guy_todd calls to tell me there’s a Boil Water order in Burlington. So all that water I’ve been drinking at work for the past week? It was contaminated with e. coli. Outstanding.
Except that I made the exact same emergency pit stop at McDonald’s when I was driving to faire last weekend to set up the encampment.
So is it stress, or bad water?
My mother has had stomach upsets (she calls them “attacks” when she’s being polite and “shit attacks” when she’s being crude) on a daily basis her whole life. It is only now, at the ripe old age of 69 that she has discovered that she’s allergic to gluten. I would have NEVER put up with having diarrhea every day without getting to the bottom of things (ouch, sorry for the bad pun there). I was totally surprised to find out that she had. All this time I thought she lived in the bathroom because she had a small bladder.
Luckily, I inherited my father’s cast iron stomach. I’ve gone as long as a decade between cookie tossings, and I seldom get the runs. (This is one of the reasons why last year’s Post-Pennsic food poisoning was such a nasty surprise, my belly just doesn’t misbehave like that.) However, when things start to go wonky with my intestinal tract these days, I try to listen to the wisdom of my gut.
I never really make the connection between stress and my bowels until I moved out on the Wasband and lived with my Evil Twin Skippy. Skippy has anxiety disorder, and I remember him once telling me that one of the effects of anxiety is that “Everything must go! Right now!” That was one of those lightbulb moments for me. I realized that the wasband’s all night sessions sitting on the throne often occurred on nights when we’d had a fight earlier in the evening. And that my daily dashes to the bathroom between second and third periods during my second year of teaching were probably due to the stresses of working for an asshat principal that I’d developed a completely irrational fear of. When I developed heartburn when I was working for Bossy Lady, I recognized it as my digestive system trying to get my attention. “Hey, we’re stressed out here, what do we need to do to get your attention?!?!”
I was feeling pretty stressed out about faire this weekend, for a variety of reasons. In my head all the cat herding and managing the endless details required to make things run smoothly was feeling more like work than fun. There have been so much bad news floating around about faire and the money troubles left over from the Spring run. I just wasn’t excited about being at CTRF as either a patron or a participant. I wasn’t loving the new faire layout, which moved our encampment away from our prime spot near the entrance and privies (most people’s first stop once they get in the door) to now being at the ass-end of the faire (you have to walk through the whole site to get to us). And the weather forecast was wrong, Wrong, WRONG for opening weekend. We didn’t need rain, we needed beautiful weather. And work hasn’t exactly been stress free either. So yeah, I was a mental mess going into the weekend.
And my gut knew it. In the middle of doing the dishes on Saturday it gave the warning gurgle. I sat for a minute, listening, and knew what was coming. I do appreciate the fact that my body usually gives me an early warning of nastiness to come (Bad taste of bile in the mouth? You’re going to barf. Burning in the gut? Might want to find a toilet and get comfortable.) I excused myself, and told Ilsa that I was going to have to go, erm, pray for a bit.
And it wasn’t a pretty sight. I’m hoping that unnatural color was due to the Red 40 in the Gatorade I’d been chugging all day and not due to something more scary. I was hoping it was a one time thing, that I'd gotten it out of my system. But no, I was halfway to faire on Sunday when I had to pull off the highway to make an emergency pit stop at McDonald’s. And there was a second, less drastic trot to the privies later on Sunday. And again with the ick this morning. Enough already!
So here I am, writing up this post in my head at work about how stressed out I am and how it is manifesting itself, when guy_todd calls to tell me there’s a Boil Water order in Burlington. So all that water I’ve been drinking at work for the past week? It was contaminated with e. coli. Outstanding.
Except that I made the exact same emergency pit stop at McDonald’s when I was driving to faire last weekend to set up the encampment.
So is it stress, or bad water?