When you bleed from your ass, you worry, look online for what it could be from, hope it\u2019s H. pylori, and buy cabbage, cut good hunks off the head mornings to puree with water. It\u2019s what you drink first thing to start your day, a pulpy green chug-a-lug of raw earth. By now you\u2019ve quit caffeine, quit beer. Can\u2019t handle those hard drugs. You\u2019re a water-n-veggie guy, try aloe vera juice and search out dandelion root, and the roots of licorice, of marshmallow, stuff you\u2019ve read of that\u2019s supposed to stop your ass from bleeding. You try it all, but your ass keeps on a-bleedin\u2019. Your ass bleeds as if it\u2019ll go on bleeding, straight into the sunset.<\/p>\n
And when you bleed from the ass, if you\u2019re a dude, your thoughts may stray off course. You might find yourself empathizing with women who, though they don\u2019t bleed from the ass unless something has gone wrong, have been known to bleed from the adjacent orifice until their time known as menopause comes. That\u2019s when they put men on pause. You might wonder as well why their monthly bleeding sessions are called \u201cmenstruation\u201d when they are not men. The word should be\u00a0women<\/em>struation, right? When a man bleeds from his ass, that\u2019s menstruation. One\u2019s gotta wonder at the etymology!<\/p>\n But enough on blood already! So far the side-effects from the chemo have been a bout of diarrhea, and slight tingling and dryness in my hands. Otherwise I feel pretty good.<\/p>\n But my ass is bleeding, yo? I wonder how long it\u2019ll take the Capecitabine to stop my ass from bleeding. I look forward to it. I\u2019m looking forward to like, looking down into the commode one morning after defecating and seeing no<\/em> blood. Or maybe it\u2019s the radiation that\u2019ll stop my ass from bleeding, but my radiation treatments don\u2019t start \u2019til Thursday. My docs maintain that the chemo\/radio combo\u2019ll do the trick. My intuitive guess is my ass\u2019ll stop bleeding by the end of next week.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Still, can you knock a guy for crossing fingers? For jumping the gun? For wishing upon a star that his ass\u2019ll stop bleeding straightaway? Such was my hope\u2014nay, excitement I would even go so far as to say\u2014this morning when I peered down into the bowl half-expecting to see results. You can imagine my surprise upon seeing an increase in blood. Or maybe it was only a change in brightness in the blood, which gave the appearance of more blood.<\/p>\n Yeah, the stool was a lighter brown than normal, harder, and the blood much brighter, which caused for contrast. Blood just clung all over that poop. I\u2019m hopeful though, because any change must be good. This is the beginning, the first stage my bleeding ass must go through before the tumor dries up and begins to shrink.<\/p>\n The first time I saw blood in my poop may have been several years ago, but I ignored it. I\u2019m an impressionable guy, and an argument with my girlfriend about colonoscopies may have conditioned me to look the other way. How much easier to pretend nothing could be wrong. After noticing such a thing, you\u2019ll probably be less inclined to examine your poop. Having seen something suspicious did not make me take a closer look at my poop.<\/p>\n Then in June I drove to Maine with my lil\u2019 bro for my half-sister\u2019s wedding. He and I shared a room, and I was kind of impressed and appalled at the same time by the way he rolled out of bed and took a healthy dump then left the bathroom, all in the space of a minute, wiped and everything. My own body didn\u2019t work that way. I usually did my business hours after waking, after drinking coffee and what not. It struck me as vulgar, getting up then shitting that way. On that particular morning, when I went, I saw streaks of blood in my poop. I ignored it. What was I to do? Make an issue, either to myself or anybody else, when we were getting ready for a goddamned wedding?<\/p>\n The summer passed by quick. A new semester started. I taught two classes, took long walks, ate lots of pineapple, swallowed proteolytic enzymes over that a YouTube doc recommended it for cervical degenerative disk disease, which I have a severe case of. When of a sudden my bowel habits changed, when I was getting up and crapping in the manner I\u2019d seen my brother do in Maine, I imagined it was the pineapple and enzymes. People grow older, their bodies change, right? But I was like shitting quite a bit, like six or seven times a day, and it always felt like more poop was left inside me. As a result of my new shittings I was forced to take a closer look at my poopamoly.<\/p>\n Yeah, there was blood in there all right, dark maroon streaks all along it, on top of the poop, and blood-clotty things stuck in the grooves along the poop. I figured, as many in my situation would figure, that I must be got hemorrhoids. I was pleased to read online that not all hemorrhoids itch. Because my ass didn\u2019t itch! Hallelujah! I bought Preparation H. It seemed to help, but my ass still bled after two weeks of using it. My bod needed something stronger, so I got the suppositories, shoved those babies up my ass before sleeping and in the morning. They worked better, but no cookie.<\/p>\n One day in Manhattan, as I walked to the Korean Society on 6th Ave. to attend a language class, I suddenly had to go, which had been happening a lot of late. You eat a sandwich, you gotta go. You eat a peanut, you gotta go. You drink a cup of milk, you gotta go. Seemed I always had to go, and I was doing the safety measure thing, where you go ahead of time so you don\u2019t find yourself in a situation where you gotta go when you are busy with something important, like teaching a class, or walking along a city sidewalk. As a result of having to suddenly go, I ducked into my favorite Panera Bread at 32nd and 5th. Down in the bathroom, in the private stall, I saw how the bowl was like splattered with bright red blood. Gave me a scare.\u00a0Wow, I\u2019m glad that\u2019s not me<\/em>, I thought, but had the nagging sensation that it was gonna be me in no time at all\u2014yikes! Shit seemed like an omen.<\/p>\n Somewhere along the way I started examining my shit in detail. I\u2019d put my wipes on the tank of the commode then kneel over the bowl, holding a toothbrush by the bristles. The toothbrush was my prod. I dissected my turds with it. I was a poop scientist, yo? Thing was, my fatigue was way intense. I could barely get to work, barely grade papers. Somehow I hung on. My girlfriend suspected something wrong. When she asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m dying of cancer,\u201d and she laughed uproariously. What else was she to do? Then she would ask, \u201cAre you okay?\u201d and I would say, \u201cI hope so.\u201d I could tell she was worried. But I didn\u2019t say anything. We\u2019d had those talks about colonoscopies, and I didn\u2019t want to rehash the whole thing and feel lousy about it all over again. Finally I told her I was bleeding.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I used to tell people, when asked why I didn\u2019t have health insurance, that I couldn\u2019t afford it because I was saving money for my chemo treatments. I did not say that as a joke, but as a way of bypassing descriptions of my dreams. I was putting away money for a move overseas. I was trying, anyway, but with a piddly income like mine, good luck. What I wanted was to live in Korea, speak the language, be as Korean a guy as I could be. I\u2019d even fantasized about getting surgery to make me look Asian. When the cancer entered my life, my dreams were disrupted. They were put on pause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Down in the bathroom, in the private stall, I saw how the bowl was like splattered with bright red blood. Gave me a scare.\u00a0Wow, I\u2019m glad that\u2019s not me, I thought, but had the nagging sensation that it was gonna be me in no time at all\u2014yikes! Shit seemed like an omen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[760],"tags":[1135,282,2006,2002,2004,2005,2003],"class_list":["post-15372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-nonfiction","tag-blood","tag-cancer","tag-chemotherapy","tag-colonoscopy","tag-medical","tag-menopause","tag-poop","writer-john-oliver-hodges"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15372"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15535,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15372\/revisions\/15535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}