Ever since I learned that Elvis died with more than 30 lbs of feces in his body all I can think of is….. how???? Assuming a person is continuing to eat day after day, how can you continue to put things in and have nothing come out? I don’t understand why your body wouldn’t force you to expel what’s in your system (well before 30lbs) one way or another?
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After I underwent surgery where a section of my colon was removed, I went from a taking a good, satisfying dump multiple time per day, to essentially nothing at all except rabbit pellets 8 to 10 times a day.
I gained quite a bit of weight and my belly grew quite distended. It got to the point where, on to of daily stool softener, I had to drink a bottle of CitroMag once a week and blow things out like I was prepping for a colonoscopy.
One week I did an experiment: I downed a bottle of CitroMag, and before thing got explosive, I jumped on the scale. After a violent hour and a half on the toilet, I got on the scale again. I’d “lost” more than SIX POUNDS.
The part that really shocks me is that previous weeks had seemed like far more horror show had occurred. I have no idea what the largest voided volume actually was.
Constipation is a slowing of the process of [peristalsis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peristalsis), or the way the colon moves feces down the line to the exit in the same manner you’d empty a toothpaste tube. Dairy can lead to it, dehydration too, but about the most chronic cause is abuse of opioids. If peristalsis is not working, the backup can kill you.
I do know a thing or two about this (and you can skip to the **tl;dr**.). My surgeons and I had a scare, after a [sigmoid volvulus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvulus) and resulting colostomy, about Crohn’s Disease. Before the (emergency) surgery, my intestines had shut down, the aforementioned backup had perforated my bowel and I was literally turning green – I heard the surgeon down the hall screaming at the ER prep crew* to hurry up or they would be the ones explaining to my wife why she was now a widow. This is what I mean by *kill you,* ’cause that’s how close I came.
For a month, I was kept [NPO](https://nicespeechlady.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/HANDOUT-ABLE-NPO-has-been-Recommended-What-Does-this-Mean-1.pdf), fed via [hyperalimentation](https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/hyperalimentation), and wasn’t so much as passing gas. Luckily, after a few weeks of tense waiting, my innards cranked slowly back up, with no sign of Crohn’s (which is an immune disorder), and six months later I got a resection so I could poop like a human again, and not through my abdominal wall into a bag. It was, no contest, the worst year of my life. That was twenty-nine years ago.
**tl;dr** – butt humor is funny (even babies know this), but excretion is no joke. Never take your butthole for granted – life is *literally* shit when you’re not using it.
*[Edit] that’s the OR prep crew, not the ER.
I’ve got a personal story about this that’s a bit embarrassing.
I used to do drugs, heroin mostly. What happens with opiates is all the muscles that normally move everything around become so relaxed they don’t do anything. I once went 16-17 days without pooping. It fucking sucked. What happened was the poop closest to the orifice essentially turned into a reverse butt plug. It took so much GD effort to get that out. Not trying to gross you out, just being real here.. I tried probing a pen up there to try and loosen it up and ultimately had to use my finger to try to scoop it off the walls. Needless to say, blood was involved and it was horrible.
Too much information?
Carry on
Defecation is mostly an active mechanical process. Meaning that your bowel moves stool to the anus and expel it. Poop don’t “fall out” of your body when you poop. It is pushed out by your bowel.
Your bowel has muscles, and if your muscles don’t work, like if you’re on medications that reduces bowel function, poop isn’t being pushed out, so you get constipated. Likewise, if your stool is hard and dry, that makes it hard for your bowel to push move it along and push it out.
Why am I reading these comments?
“The coroner found over 35 pounds of white chalky fecal matter in Elvis’ colon at the time of death. As humiliating as this fact is, he was found on the floor in front of the toilet. His colon during the autopsy was found to be 5 to 6 inches which is double the normal size. And the length of his colon was between 8 and 9 feet. The average is 4 to 5. The examiners found food that had been in his colon, they estimated, 4 to 5 months.
Read More: The Truth About Elvis Presley’s Death | https://999ktdy.com/the-truth-about-elvis-presleys-death/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral”
And how does one know if there are few kilos of fecal matter in their guts?
I saw a comment about vomiting shit, which ought to be recognized as part of the answer to this question. There’s another part I haven’t seen yet: shit can also end up coming out the urethra when you pee.
I have diverticulitis, and my sigmoid colon is going away next week in a surgery. It basically stopped working. I knew I had a problem, because it hurt like hell. I had no idea that it had become perforated and attached to my bladder. That was found in the CT scans I received after having gone to the ER.
At that time, I actually had not had a diverticulitis episode for many months, and have tried very hard to adhere to a diet that keeps me working properly. I do a very intricate dance with fiber- can’t have too much and can’t have not enough; must drink water all the time; get exercise; be careful what and how much I eat. The stuff about seeds and small things getting stuck in you is a myth, but you do have to work at keeping things functional.
Not yet knowing that a small amount of poop was getting into my bladder, I had developed a severe UTI and been living with some discomfort and taking antibiotics for the UTI. My doctor and I both thought that a UTI was all it was, until I woke up with significant abdominal pain one morning.
At first I thought I just had a stomach bug, maybe the flu. After a couple of hours, I thought maybe it was something worse, took a covid test and it was negative. Not long after that I was calling my husband to come home and help me, but before he could make it through the front door, I was calling an ambulance. The pain went from bearable but unpleasant to holy fuck this hurts worse than anything I’ve ever felt before in a matter of a couple of hours. By then, of course, I knew it was a more severe instance of diverticulitis than I’d ever experienced before.
I was transferred from the local ER to a larger hospital and kept there for six days on IV antibiotics and pain killers. On day 2 or 3, I can’t remember which (Fentanyl and Dilaudid) I had the startling experience of pooping when I peed. I just about lost my mind along with my dignity.
But here we are, at the point where I finally get the surgery I’ve apparently needed for some time, and I hear this will improve my life by a lot. In the month and a half since the event that necessitated the painful ambulance ride over a bumpy mountain highway, I’ve lost nearly 30 lbs due to being on a liquid diet. That’s also going to be an improvement and I should be back to hiking and doing all the other stuff I love doing by late winter/early spring.
For anyone with diverticulitis, please take it seriously and proactively, so you don’t end up shitting when you pee. I had always known my grandpa had it, but turns out so do a few other family members, and they just don’t talk about it, since a lot of people don’t want to tell you something like this happened to them. I don’t care anymore. If I can help someone else avoid going through this, I will.
After I got shot, I couldn’t shit for 13 days, they didn’t let me eat anything at all either.
Eventually, they shoved a rather large enema up my ass to help me get flowing. I recall vividly arguing with the nurse to use ALL the lube, why was he being so stingy with the shit, like it was a precious fluid.
Fun Fact: If you are 100% blocked up, farts come out your mouth.
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