Holy shit … does the bible really talk about poop? You bet it does …

And you shall have a trowel with your tools, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement. ~Deuteronomy 23:13

And the hidden message here is that excrement is bad, dirty. Cover up your shit, man! And then in the next verse we learn why …

Because the Lord your G-d walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that He may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you. ~Deuteronomy 23:13

Ah, now that is confusing. Poop is “indecent” and must be removed and buried or the holy one, blessed be He will turn away. WTF? If, in fact, we are created in his image, and our rear discharge is indecent, how does all this correlate? I will leave that to you and your clergy.

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I honestly don’t remember what we called this bodily waste when I was growing up. I think bm and bowel movement were used, I should ask mom. And I was never into laughing about it as a kid. Nothing strange or whatever, just didn’t particularly find it funny. And throughout life, never spoke about it much. My children are severely disabled and I have continually been changing diapers for just about 26 years. Shit is my life.

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My first college roommate, in 1976, was the Shah of Iran’s nephew. Really. And his father was a military leader in the palace. At that point, Iran was not the country it is now. Ali did not speak more than a handful of words in English. He was great, looked exactly like a shorter Omar Sharif, had oodles of money, and we got huge tins of pistachios every two weeks. Early on he called me over, was tugging on his bedding and asked

How you call this?

That’s a sheet.

Shit

No, sheet.

Shit?

Honestly, I took him in to the bathroom and explained.

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In 2012, The New York Times had an article entitled As West Harlem Picks Up, Dog Owners Don’t. Apparently to avoid using words that may be objectionable, the author seems to bend over backwards not to shit on anyone’s fecal sensitivity. Here are the synonyms used in that one article:

• dog dirt
• nasty bit of business
• curb-level scourge
• renegade dog leavings
• waste / dog waste
• stuff
• poop
• what a dog has left behind
• instances of unlucky steps
• doggy-do

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What I don’t understand is why they did not just use scat. Merriam-Webster defines scat as “an animal fecal dropping.” Works for people as well actually.

Personally, I really like scat. Scat itself. So much I have been known to pay money to be exposed to scat, at least in my younger days. And who does scat better than Ella Fitzgerald and The Velvet Fog, aka Mel Tormé?

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Ok, on to the post.

This entire adventure started many months ago when I noticed changes in my … ummm … droppings scat feces stools poop. As Oprah is said to have said (and the Internet does not lie) “Everyone looks at their poop.” There were changes in color (lighter), consistency (a bit looser), and the feeling as it exited my (very cute) butt. This was for a while and I noticed what may have been (it was) blood. Remember that radiation radiates most, if not all, of my pelvic girdle. That includes parts of my intestines and rectum (and what used to be the family jewels). That causes (and possibly also because of the concurrent chemotherapy) a very common side effect: diarrhea. I found that everything in that area was confused; I was not always sure if I needed to just urinate, to defecate, some of both or sometimes neither. It was not the easiest to control it all. No accidents, but absolutely needed to sit, no matter what I thought I had to do. The doctors would ask if I had blood in my stool, and when I asked what they would do different for a “yes” or a “no,” the answer was “nothing.” That is when I started eating beets (which I love anyway) as my little protest. (In case you are scratching your head, for many people beets cause their poop to be reddish.)

Towards the end of the chemo-radiation, my poop was somewhat “normalizing.” That is, normal for me. Not that I ever looked (lol), but I know what my poop generally looked like over the past, oh, 59 odd years. Or at least couple of decades. Color was darkening a bit, and consistency was a bit more familiar. That was at least the right direction.

I am now a week and a bit past the chemo-radiation. And guess what?

My poop is back! I looked this morning and saw my old friend! (Apologies to any old friends reading this.)

I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on this blog. I am just a poor shmuck with rectal cancer, but this has to be a good sign. Not a sign from the holy one, blessed be He, because He would have me bury it. But it has to be good. Please, G-d, tell me this is good.

And then like all the old girlfriends, it was gone in a flush.

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My next medical appointment is for imaging, a CT and an MRI, on August 6 and then I meet Cerberus II two days later. The scans are to see how the tumor has changed and to see if the cancer has spread. The idea of that scares me shitless.

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And now for some great scat. In her 1949 performance of “Flyin’ Home”, Fitzgerald alternates the bilabial “b” and “p” plosives with the alveolar plosive “d”. The “b” and “p” sounds are formed similarly to the sounds of jazz wind instruments, which sound by the release of built-up mouth air pressure onto the reed, while the “d” sound is similar to the tonguing on jazz brass instruments. William Stewart, a Seattle researcher, has proposed that this alternation simulates the exchange of riffs between the wind and brass sections that is common in big bands.