Someone once said to me that hospitals are like the weird gateway between life and death, like a bus terminal or a train station. That image always stuck with me, I remember it every time I find myself in a hospital. 

Hospitals aren’t always the funnest places. Usually you’re there for a really exciting time in life or a really scary time in life. That’s why knowing someone in the health space can make the clinical processes of the medical world seem easier, more familiar. 

My Dad has played that role for a lot of people. From our immediate family to friends of friends and acquaintances of acquaintances, my Dad has helped a lot of people worry less in some pretty stressful circumstances. 

This is a story of a time where he helped me. 

It was 2016 and I was living in Sydney. There was a lot going on in my world at the time, I had just finished working part-time in the Channel 9 Newsroom and transitioned to my first full-time role. At the same time I was finishing up my last year of university and dating my first real girlfriend. It’s fair to say that I was a little stressed, but I was managing at least so I thought. 

I’m not sure whether it was my diet or just the stress from transitioning from my fun, care-free life as a university student to full-time working graduate but every now and then whenever I’d go poop, I’d notice a bit of blood on the toilet paper. 

At the time I was also really losing a lot of my hair as well so at the time it really felt like my life was actually going to end. I had all of the symptoms necessary for a successful application for respite at an Anglicare facility.

When it happened the first time I panicked. I called Dad and he asked me a bunch of questions, my answers didn’t seem to phase him too much so he said to just relax and call him if it kept happening. 

The next time I went to the bathroom, everything was normal. I was so relieved, I just remember praying and thanking God that it wasn’t my time yet. 

Then a week or two later, it happened again. And for a whole week straight every time it was there every time I wiped. I was so stressed that week. My girlfriend came over and made me dinner one night. She was a qualified chef and she had a new recipe for a beetroot salad she wanted to try on me. When I got to her house, I just completely broke down. I thought I was going to die, she calmed me down and very rationally just told me to call my Dad again. 

It was like one of those things where I didn’t want to know what it was. You know, like I felt fine. Everything seemed normal. It was just sometimes when I pooped my asshole would bleed. I’m sure if I ignored it it would just go away. 

The next day after I’d seen Bianca, the toilet bowl of my regular morning poop looked like the end of Django Unchained. There was just so much blood.

I called Dad and he told me that I should come up to Newcastle over the weekend and see a specialist, one of the guys he knew at the hospital. He said that it might be worth doing an endoscopy to make sure everything was okay.  

When I got up to Newcastle, the doctor could only see me on Monday. So I called my new job and asked them for the Monday off, they weren’t really that happy about it but I told them it was the only time a specialist could see me. 

Monday rolled around and I went into the John Hunter, on what would be the weirdest take your son to work day in the history of taking your son to work days. 

Dad dropped me off at some wing, I wanna say emergency but I don’t think it was...seems a little dramatic. A nurse asked me a bunch of questions and then I spoke with a guy named Raj (duh). He came in with my Dad and they asked me a few questions, similar to the questions my Dad had asked when I called him the first time. 

After I answered all his questions he said that we should do an endoscopy. It’s like my asshole heard and suddenly my butthole tightened. He told the nurse to prep me and said he’d see me in an hour or so. 

The nurse got me to take my clothes off and she had this bottle with a nozzle on the end of it. 

She said:

“This is to help you poop and make sure that your bowels are all clean.

Now look, either you can do this or I can do it for you. It’s pretty easy. You go into the bathroom, bend over, put the nozzle in your ass and squeeze the liquid until there is none left.”

She could tell I was scared, she said that it would be fine and if I struggled she’d come in there and do it for me. 

So taking the bottle I scurried over to the bathroom. I was so confused, I felt like all this liquid was just going to drip down my leg. How was this going to help me poop?

I went into the bathroom and locked the door. Putting the bottle on the sink, I hoisted my new hospital gown up and bent over. I grabbed the bottle and like I was feeding a newborn baby, I stuck it in my poop shoot and squeezed the bottle. 

At first I didn’t really feel anything, I didn’t think it was even working. I was waiting for the liquid to start dripping down the back of my quad but nothing happened - my legs were completely dry. In fact, the bottle was getting more and more compressed as the liquid left the bottle and entered my butthole. 

In a moment I was shocked, amazing, bamboozled that my ass could hold so much liquid and so quickly and effectively?! Where was all this going? Halfway through I pulled the bottle out, full expecting for all the liquid to start pouring out, but it didn’t, My butt remained sealed and I was completely dry. 

HOW DID I NOT KNOW MY BODY COULD DO THAT?

Is this how pregnant women feel when they realise how amazing their bodies are? I felt like when Spiderman discovered new powers, or like as a kid I always wished I’d find a secret room in your house that was like an attic or like this room where a wall had been painted over that would be like actually the coolest room in the house. That’s what this felt like, but with my ass’s ability to hold liquid. 

In pure joy and sheer curiosity I finished squeezing the rest of the bottle into my butt. And when I finished I started testing my butt’s ability to hold the liquid. I started doing star jumps in the bathroom and then feeling my butt to see if any liquid had come out. NOTHING!

After about a minute, I really needed to poop and so I sat on the toilet and it was like someone turned on a tap. It felt like I was straight up pissin’ out of my butt. My bowel was clean - ready for my endoscopy. 

Walking out of that bathroom, I felt like a new man. My ass could hold at least half a litre of liquid. Amazing. When I got back to my hospital bed, the nurse asked me how it went. I said it went surprisingly well. I told her I had no idea butts could do that. 

“They can do a whole lot more than that” she said with a wink.

(Part 2) tomorrow.