November 2005 Archives

There's been mostly mourning over the death of footballing hero George Best, but I've also read plenty of comments about his drinking. To people of my age, George Best was almost as famous for being an alcoholic as being a footballer, and his liver transplant three years ago was controversial because people thought he would just start drinking again anyway - which he did.

But I still don't understand the really judgemental people, the ones who say that he should have stopped drinking. He was an alcoholic, and so he drank. Yes, sometimes alcoholics can give up, but often they can't.

It's the sheer gall of this kind of judgement that bugs me. It's the size of ego that is required to think to yourself "I disapprove of that - and if I was an alcoholic, I wouldn't drink. If I was overweight, I would diet; if I was taking heroin, I would stop."

How the hell do you know that then? You really think you're such a majestic person that you would overcome any problem that was thrown at you?

The truth is it's easy to overcome other people's problems; the ones we can't manage are our own. Remember that the next time someone says to you "Oh yes, IBS - that's not a big deal. If I had that I'd just take fiber..."

Have been in bits and pieces of pain over the last few days. I keep thinking of my worst ever time with IBS, when I was working full-time in an office, living alone and really struggling with almost constant pain.

I would fight tooth and nail to just make it to the weekend, and then I'd find that I just couldn't bring myself to do anything useful, like hoovering or washing up. I'd do the food shopping because obviously starving was out of the question, but anything else just had to wait, while I did things I actually enjoyed.

Why? Because it felt like I had to get SOME pleasure out of life, I had to have at least a couple of days a week when I could get to the end of the day and think "Well, that wasn't too traumatic, wouldn't mind doing that again".

And it wasn't like I was yachting or hanging out at the Ritz, or even hanging out with my friends - I didn't have the strength for that anyway. It was just the tiny, everyday pleasures, watching TV or playing on my computer, just something, anything to let my heart and soul know that my life was not going to be entirely composed of suffering.

Someone sent me an email the other day which said something like "I remember my normal poops like other people remember where they were when Kennedy was shot."

That line sums up a lot about the IBS life. Non-IBS sufferers probably wonder what this poop obsession is all about, but we IBS people know.

Your poop very quickly transcends its functional, practical, waste-removing purpose and becomes an iconic symbol of everything that is wrong in your body.

When you look at your poop you are no longer looking at the corporeal results of your daily munching, but instead you see a fortune-telling oracle for your day.

Liquid poop? You'll be back in the bathroom within a minute. Pellet poop? Those spasms are gonna hurt later. No poop at all? Well, it was worth a try, thanks for your time. Keep waiting sunshine.

And a perfect poop? You are a pooping master, you are an intestinal professional, your body is no longer a bringer of suffering and misery but is a finely-tuned digestinal machine. And everything's going to be fine.