A Little Humor - Potty Chairs and Significant Others

The garage apartment I'm staying in uses a septic tank and with the tremendous rain we've had in Austin the last few days, it's managed to overflow the tank which makes the toilet useless.  My landlord, a very kind, sweet man, pulled a hospital type "potty chair" out of his attic and set it outside my back door for use until the plumbers come to fix the septic system.  It made me think of this:

 2 years ago when I was first diagnosed, they discovered I had cancerous cells in my lungs too.  They felt it important to determine if they were the same cancer as in my prostate or a different type.  I went through 3, YES 3!, lung biopsies.  I was in Seton hospital for just over 2 weeks.  During the last 2 biopsies, they collapsed my right lung (once by accident and once on purpose) to get the cancerous tissue they needed for testing.  When your lung is collapsed, they insert a tube about a half inch thick and about 10 inches long into your back running down the backside of the collapsed lung.  It sucks out any fluid that builds up so the lung can slowly heal and reinflate.

As you might imagine, the pain of having this tube rubbing against your lung EVERY time you breath was just horrendous!  SO they had me on IV pain meds that I got every 3 hours or so.  VERY constipating.  My soon to be husband was there with me almost every hour he wasn't working (he was my rock through that horrible experience) and he happened to work at a physical rehab facility so he could do just about anything short of what nurses do.  He'd helped me sponge bath myself (I was attached to a machine and had the IV so I could only get about 3 steps from the bed), so he'd seen me quite naked in the hospital and, of course, at home.

I told him I thought I might actually be able to have a bowel movement (I hadn't in several days) so he got me the potty chair and sat it next to the bed.  I'd never been in this situation before and was a little unsure about potty chair protocol so I asked the brilliantly stupid question, "What do I do?" He looked at me like I was an imbecile and said, "Scott, you sit your butt on it and shit.  Understand?"  I shook my head yes and he kept piddling around the room doing stuff.  I finally said, "Are you going to step out of the room?"  He replied, "Oh just go ahead.  I deal with people crapping all the time at rehab."  I said, "Well you may be ok with being in the room while I poo, but I'm NOT ok with it, so please step out till I tell you I'm done."  He rolled his eyes and left the room and I took care of my business. 

Some things are best done in private.