Are You Done With That?

Okay , this is a warning to the many people who read this (NOT!) this is a gross topic.

I have been fascinated with the one ww post on the Canadian message boards for a couple of days now. I have been talking about it to all my friends and family - at odd moments like dinner time - much to their delight. For those who don't have medical friends or family and are unaware of this super power that nurses among other people possess - I will explain.

Nurses can talk about the most disgusting, the most vile things that we experience - and trust me there are many- during almost any moment of their lives. We can plan meals , we can eat food that resembles the bodily fluid we are gleefully talking about. Now get a bunch of nurses together and this power becomes awe inspiring. Very macho, I suppose. You can spot this phenomenon by the animated talkers/eaters surrounded by the non medical people wearing this horrified and nauseous expression. Re- thinking all they have ever heard of nurses as angels. Then the nurse can swoop in at the abandoned goodie the person was eating before the stories started and say "are you done with that?"

For evidence check out this amazing thread on all nurses- be warned it is 74 pages long and will make you feel grossed out and possibly weak from laughing depending on who you are.

Anyway , back to the ww thread. This girl on their had C-difficle, which is a nasty illness in the news for outbreaks in Quebec hospitals. It has been around for a long time. It can cause all kinds of problems - mimicking the symptoms of colitis and all that. It is spread through a fecal/oral route. Most people have this bug in their bowels regularly but when they need to go on antibiotics , they usually kill the healthy bacteria and leave it open for the c-diff to multiply. My Aunt caught it this way - and ended up fighting off the pneumonia but succumbing to the c-diff and died a month or two after getting it.

Well this poster on WW ended up trying all the normal avenues to be cured and she ended up resorting to an alternate form of therapy. A fecal enema. Yes, you read that right. They took her husband's fresh stool and mixed it in the blender (ewww) with some probiotics and gave it to her with an enema. She was told to hold it in for as long as she could- for her it was an hour. Now I had heard of this before (possibly the all nurses thread) but for some reason the mechanics of it never really occurred to me. The blender, the collecting it and holding it in etc.. Never occurred to me. This got me thinking and talking to people about it (you're welcome) I started asking people who they would use as a donor. Most people seem to pick their significant other or if they have kids - that seems to be easy answer.

My sister's reaction was the funniest I thought - her reaction wasn't as much on WHO she would choose but HOW she would go about asking - she said how on earth do you ask someone for that?? She is single so I was more concerned with who she would pick. But still, she was fixated on how one asks. I mean people would know you were sick and if you told them your dilemma I'm sure most people would offer, right? It's not like a kidney or something. And I would think it would be you the recipient who would be picky about whose stool was given to you as an enema...

And it wouldn't be like you would see someone come out of a washroom and say "Are you done with that?"