Running With the Runs

Running With the Runs
Dorcas Annette Walker

I suffer with an irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) that can wreck havoc on your life. Thankfully by watching what I eat most of the time I do okay. But… if I get lulled into a false sense of security thinking that troubles with my bowels are a thing of the past or forget that IBS lurks within my system it will hit unexpectedly with a great force and drain precious energy. I know I sound like some old lady in a nursing home or someone from the group of ancient tottery folk where life revolves only around their bowels. Being a minister’s wife you have interaction with a lot of senior citizens so over the years I’ve heard oodles of details about bowel problems. Now horror of horrors here is my story of the bowels.

I realized that something I ate didn’t agree with me when a couple of hours later I hit the toilet and had diarrhea. Usually one occurrence is all that I have. So when I had a run for the toilet one evening I wasn’t too alarmed. Then I kept cramping and hit the toilet a second time. Dummy me. I didn’t take anything figuring that by morning I’d be okay. The next morning guess what? I paid another visit to the porcelain throne. This time I dosed myself with Kaopectate. Even though I watched what I ate (not much since I was feeling bloated and having annoying cramps) I made another visit to the bathroom. By now I felt quite drained. I only drank clear liquids and nibbled on toast or dry crackers thinking that surely the next day I’d be back to normal again without life revolving around the toilet. I do have better things to do and I was tired of living in the bathroom. Still to stay on the safe side I kept up my meager diet. Then I had another episode- you don’t want the details, trust me- and dosed myself again. That night I was cramping and miserable enough that I had trouble falling to sleep. It finally registered that from previous incidents I could drink the entire bottle of Kaopectate, but it wouldn’t stop the diarrhea. The only thing that worked effectively was coke. So my loving long-suffering husband around midnight went to Wal-Mart and got me some coke. It was a long night between sipping coke and trying to get comfortable enough to sleep.

The fourth day I was quite weak, but at least the run to the toilet had finally stopped. I kept up my dry diet and drank coke all day. By the fifth day I was able to slowly start eating more foods without repercussion of my bowels, although I still drank coke, which to me is like medicine. I know the younger generation won’t understand, but I was raised without having soft drinks around and all through my married life we didn’t keep soft drinks on hand. I really don’t care for them. I’m a tea drinker. So to me drinking coke is the same as taking medicine. But when I get desperate I gladly drink the stuff to stop the diarrhea. By day six I declared myself normal and cautiously left off drinking coke. So when I find myself running with the runs I hit the coke. Nothing like having to keep a bottle of coke nearby for security, huh?