Don't read if you're not ready to...

...be grossed out by my human body, especially my digestive system.

I'll leave a gap for anyone who doesn't want to read it...

keep going

this is potentially very gross

last chance to turn back...

For those who haven't read my health posts yesterday and today, I woke up with an awful case of diarrhoea and left the bathroom for a grand total of about 2 hours in the 15 hours that I was awake.

It started with very very lose, grey poo but that rapidly turned to purely brown liquid and I had all of 30 seconds to get to the bathroom, pull my trousers and pants down and sit before my bum exploded.  I don't think I left the bathroom until 5.30am when I turned my laptop on and filled in the form on the NHS Direct website and took the phone in with me each time my bum exploded for the next 2 hours.

I got a couple of "this line is incredibly busy right now but we know that you're waiting for a call back and we'll call you as soon as possible" and the second one said to call 111 and cancel the callback if my symptoms had improved and I no longer needed the call back.  I was fed up of waiting by that point and decided to cancel the call back.

15 minutes later I got the call back and she said that she'd seen that I'd cancelled the call but she just wanted to be sure I was OK.  I explained that I'd left the bathroom for a grand total of about 5 minutes since 3.30am and was just concerned that I'd somehow caught the bug that's currently doing the rounds in the hospital, but that I was fine other than that.

The nurse went through a few questions and said to keep hydrated but that it sounded like it was just a bad case of diarrhoea and that it should usually clear up in less than a week but to stay off work and away from others for 48 hours after it cleared up.

By lunchtime I'd drunk about 3 litres of water and I was finally (I hoped) able to sit more comfortably in the living room for longer than 2 minutes at a time.

I cautiously made myself a mug of decaff coffee and was in the bathroom again before the kettle boiled.

Maybe being upright was the problem?

I cautiously took my pills in the evening, completely anxious about pooing the bed.

Thankfully I woke up at 3.30am with a poo-less bed, but I had to speed downstairs straight away because the poo-nami was about to explode again.

I went back to the bedroom to get my glasses, socks and shoes on and spent a couple of hours in the bathroom, but it was slightly more solid liquid this morning.

I've been in and out of the bathroom all day again, but was out for long enough to have a packet of crisps for elevenses today and my body seemed to appreciate the solids to process because I've averaged only needing to poo every hour today and even managed to make myself a creamy drinking chocolate and drink it semi-safely this evening so I'm trying to remain cautiously hopeful that tomorrow and Saturday I'll be going through the constipated diarrhoea then be back to normal ever so slowly as I start filling up my stomach and bowel with more solids again.

I'm trying to remain cautiously hopeful that my body will be back to normal by early next week but I'm not counting my chickens just yet.

35 hours after it all first started, my body produced its first semi-solid poo, so keep your fingers crossed that I'm over the worst of it now.

Will I be able to eat something solid tomorrow?  Be able to stay out of the bathroom for long enough to get washed and changed for the first time since Tuesday morning?  Only poo once instead of every hour?  We'll have to wait and see when I wake up in the morning.

Thank you for sticking with me through this blog post!