When I am out running, I always say “hi” one way or another to everyone I pass. Even cars. A simple one handed wave of sorts, a smile, something to make them remember me. This is partially so that if I go missing and my picture is flashed on the news, someone will go “yeah I waved to her at (insert time) she was running on (insert road)” and hopefully that helps somehow. I’m just out here doing my part to save my own life.
A while back though, I started getting anxiety when people I don’t know wave to me first on a run, especially when cars I don’t recognize honk. You just never know what they are thinking. It always makes me feel like I have been caught doing something wrong, like they know something I don’t and I am thrown off by it.
It’s weird because I make eye contact, I don’t shy away from that ever. But it’s a strange moment where I’m looking at them wondering what they are seeing when they look at me. I am frantically scanning my memories wondering if or how I have come across them in the past. I am willing to bet my returning smile is only half a semblance of anything resembling friendly. It probably looks like a permagrin shell of confused dementia.
This odd, slowed but somehow frantic half friendly but complete stranger type of encounter always reminds me of a patient I once had.
He had to bowel prep for a colonoscopy, this is when I worked in patient, and he needed help getting to the bedside commode to evacuate his bowels. He didn’t… we’ll let me say this.
Sometimes in life you have a poop that’s a good clean cut, could’ve been done anywhere in record time type of poop that didn’t even really require toilet paper except for the vindication of knowing it was in fact a clean break.
Other times you have the sort that requires a “back blast area clear!?!” shouting question that’s really more of a forewarning of a statement then anything because regardless of the answer it is coming and in the absence of a bowel to catch it, it’s most definitely going to be just that, a back blast.
And there are times in which you feel the urge for a back blast panicked alarm to sound but it ends up being a clean break. Which is oddly gratifying.
Well this particular gentlemen was stuck in a double room, with the good old fashioned HIPAA curtain that does nothing to protect health information, sounds or smells from permeating it’s cotton barrier with an open net top clinging to a cheap metal track that sways slightly in the breeze.
And he had a bowel prep. For a colonoscopy. And he needed help to the bedside commode. Now if you’ve done a bowel prep you know how this plays out. The poor man got about halfway to the seated position, so picture a partial squat when he sort of shouts in a panic “it’s coming”. To which is most certainly did. Everywhere. On the walls, the IV poles, the curtain was swaying in the aftermath of the force in which the liquid expelled from this man’s body. There was pooh on my boots, down my legs and the poor mans, on his roommates bed, probably suspended in the air. It was everywhere but the commode. And this man looked at me, and I at him. Such an oddly private moment to make eye contact. I honestly wasn’t sure if I should look away or apologize despite having just been shat on. I helped him sit down, sadly told him that more was surely on its way out and helped him clean up. Obviously I then cleaned the room and also myself.
There is something about witnessing someone poop that makes it strangely difficult to not make eye contact. And when you do make eye contact it’s hard to look away even though all they eye signals they are giving say “please stop looking at me because yes I am pooping but I cannot look away because I am focused”. This happens even with my kids.
It’s odd really because pooping is such a private thing. For adults mostly because kids will by and large poop wherever whenever. They have no qualms about needing to poop in some shady gas station when you’re traveling down the road, or on the side of the road when you think you’re just holding them in a squat position to pee.
This all circles back to my running and anxiety. So anyway, most days I wake up, I drink coffee, I poop and then I run. But one particular day, I didn’t have to poop before my run. I was pressed for time and doing two mile interval repeat training. I made it out. 2 miles from my
house in great time. And then it hit me.
Now, of all times I had to poop.
Which let me say this, you are not a true runner until you’ve had to, at a minimum, pee on the side of a trail or road while running. You’re not an avid runner until you’ve had to poop on a run before.
So there I was, 2 miles from home. 0615, way to early to knock on anyone's door saying I had to use the bathroom which incidentally would be WEIRD as all get out anyway. The school I was standing next to was locked, and there was just a single small stretch of wooded area between the school and the neighborhood adjacent to it. I quickly walked there, clenched because if I relaxed I was positive it was going to be a mess right there down my legs. But I couldn’t run because my stomach was making noises I simply did not trust by any means of the imagination.
By the grace of God Himself, I made it to the wood line. I slowly but steadily trekked my way into the woods, sidestepping a bush here and there, weaving deep enough into the underbrush to have some sort of cover so as not to be visible from the road. By this point the sun was shinning fully, traffic was starting to pick up and I had walked deep enough into the wood that I could do my business. I frantically dug a shallow hole with the toe of my shoe careful not to move too much, because listen it was becoming an urgent situation. I kept thinking to myself "this is why you need a zip lock bag with toilet paper for every run" alas, hindsight is always 20/20. I get a deep enough divot dug out, turn around, drop my pants and squat. At this point I am slightly panicked because it felt like a back blast area clear type of moment, but I really didn't have any way to recover from that. I just looked ahead and prayed for the best.
It was in that moment, time slowed, a white car drove by on the road. To my astonishment I could see it clearly. Apparently I hadn't trekked all that far at all. There was hope, maybe it was just me, I could see it clearly but not the other way. I was, after all, squatting down in the woods right?
Horror. The man driving the car, with his clean shaven face and hot coffee in hand casually glanced to his left. And our eyes collided.
Have you ever had time stop?
I have. This wasn't one of those "then our eyes met, time slowed and I could feel my heart beating in my throat as he brushed my hair out of my face" type moments.
No, this was a "then our eyes met, I half smiled unsure what to do, I could feel my heart beating in my throat as my freaking turd escaped my body. Then out of habit (because I wave at everyone I see on a run) and muscle memory I raised my right hand, ever so slightly to signal a friendly hello".
He never broke eye contact, because again, you can't. Once you make eye contact with someone evacuating their bowels the two of you are stuck together in a strangely intimate catastrophe of sorts. Thankfully the car kept speeding forward and our eyes were forced to disengage.
So yeah, when I am out running and someone I don't know waves at me, or honks their horn. My mind races, I quickly sift through every memory I can recall...
Was that the guy that saw me pooping?
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