Years ago, I called 911 and sent someone to the ER by ambulance for poop.

The receptionist at urgent care told me to go to the ER when I said I had stomach pains on the left side. I get that they aren't equipped to deal with any kind of cardiac crisis, and I get that they have to err on the side of assuming the average urgent care patient mistakes heart pain for stomach pain, and I get that they make those assumptions *because* they want the patient to be safe and not die. I also get that they don't know me and don't have to believe I've done my homework. But I am not stupid, and if I thought it was heart-related (hello; Lang here), I would have called 911 immediately.

I asked her why I would go to the ER for stomach pain, and she said "they can do blood tests there that we can't do." I knew she meant You Are Fat And Have Left-Side Pain And I Don't Want A Heart Attack Patient To Die Here. I asked, "there are blood tests for stomach pain?" She said, really diffidently, "there are blood tests for everything."

Tim commended me for not lunging over the counter at her.

I said, "Honestly, I'll just go back home, then. It seems like a waste of the ER's time to sort out my stomach pain." A doctor who was sitting up front finally said "It could be gallbladder; we can take a look at you." THANK YOU. Good god.

And when it turned out to be poop and not a heart attack, I wanted to punch the receptionist. (Again, I get that they want their patients to be safe, and an actual heart attack needs to be seen at the hospital. But I get frustrated when medical professionals don't fucking LISTEN to the patients.)

Poop happens. And sometimes doesn't.

I'll whitefont some of this (because not everyone wants to read about poop, or cares about it, but it's not actually graphic): the thing is, I was SUPER surprised it was constipation, because I'm boringly regular. Down to the same rough time frame every day (thank you, coffee). However, I do still have IBS, and because of stress, it's flared up, though I thought I had it managed. My type of IBS is IBS-D (which means that, lately, I have diarrhea a couple of times a week, but a lot of the time I don't, because, like I said, I have the IBS [sort of] managed).

And I told all this to the doctor at urgent care, who said that what can happen is that diarrhea can pull so much water from your GI tract so quickly that not ALL of the poop makes it through, and then it gets stuck because of the lack of water. And if that's been happening for a couple of weeks (at least), well, a lot of stuff is getting stuck, even if I *am* regular. (Which still seems weird, but I saw the evidence on the x-ray with my own 2 eyes.)

A contributing factor is that constipation can lead to reduced appetite, which I've had for a couple of weeks (which is SUPER weird, because normally I want to eat the world), which meant I actually dropped the ball on eating oatmeal and other good fiber-y foods every day, so there was nothing helping to move stuff along. (I was, however, eating a lot of cheese, so basically I was -- and still am, I guess -- full of about 900 pounds of cheese.)

So, to sum up, I promised Tim I would eat my oatmeal today. And maybe no cheese. Damn it.

Yes, oatmeal, and coffee, and lots of water are good things. But so is cheese, dammit!

To add to the poop discussion: yay, raisins. Having no problem with the constipation side effect of Percocet, because I eat a couple handfuls of raisins every day. My sister sat down yesterday with me and was eating raisins out of the jar, an hour later she was in the bathroom cursing raisins. I told her to go easy!

And in the middle of all this, broken leg, stuck in the house, uncontrollable bleeding, fainting, hospital stay, needles, needles, boredom, pain - my blood pressure is amazing. 129 over 80 this morning, and that's the highest I've seen it in two weeks. What the heck, BP. In my normal ordinary life, it's usually around 145 over 90.

Suddenly I have an urge to pat your head, Zen. But yay blood pressure and raisins keeping the unpleasant and worrisome from getting worse.

BTW StepH, thank you for validating my Welbutrin insomnia. It made me feel less alien.

You can pat my head anytime. Also, for more anecdata, Welbutrin made me agitated and I probably didn't sleep more than 4 hours at a time the whole time I was taking it. So you're def not an alien.

I'm very much in love with my Lexapro generic.

I have had my oatmeal and then later, some raisins. I feel good about my choices right now. We'll see how I feel later.

No cheese so far today. This is a travesty.

Cheese update: 2 small cubes. I am going through cheese withdrawal. (Alternatively, I *may* have been eating too much cheese lately.)