Eydie's Epic Enema

 When I woke up on Thursday morning, I had no idea that I was about to embark on a constipation ordeal that would make my worst past experience (Patagonia 1996) pale in comparison.  Anyone that has traveled or lived in less developed countries knows that scatological talk quickly becomes a far more open and common topic (even obsession) than at home.  So for those who can handle the explicit details of my epic logjam and its clinically assisted release…

By Wednesday afternoon I realized that I was overdue for my next bowel movement. I hadn’t pooped since Monday night in Jiri on a comfortable western toilet.  On Thursday morning I took a mild laxative from our med kit and gave my injured knee a good workout, squatting for a long time and pushing hard, but to no avail.  I could now feel a turd down low.  But it wouldn’t budge.

Tanka briefed us on the day’s walk, three hours down and level to Kinja where we would have lunch and then three hours up to Sete where we would spend the night.  We started to walk and I kept getting a very strong urge.  I made our group stop frequently while I squatted with my pants down, out of necessity sometimes close to the trail!  I was in great discomfort having to trek with that log stuck low in my rectum.  Yet nothing but pee would come out, despite taking more laxatives.  It became a day of profound frustration.

At one point I had to lie down for an hour at someone’s house along the trail while the others had lunch.  With all of my stops and my slow pace it took us about seven hours to get to Kinja – what should have taken three.  This is where we chose to spend the night.  We had a room located down the hall and up one large step to a shared bathroom.  This was nothing more than a creaky wooden door, a porcelain squat toilet, and a low faucet with a small bucket for pouring water down the hole and rinsing one’s hands.  I spent the evening and night between my bed and that familiar bathroom.

Adding to the discomfort and frustration of not being able to pass the stool was the thigh burn and knee stiffness that came with the dozens of super long squats.  Remember, I had just torn the ACL in my knee ten weeks ago!  Thankfully I did not have to compete with anyone for use of the bathroom.  It was bad enough just having to go through the process over and over -- putting on shoes, grabbing headlamp, toilet paper & antibacterial gel, squatting for 10-20 minutes, cleaning up, stepping down that painfully big step, and shuffling back to my sleeping bag.  It was quite an ordeal.

By 10 am on Friday morning, I knew that I couldn’t walk anywhere.  I was exhausted, miserably uncomfortable, and now my guts were churning and cramping.  We told Tanka all of the details of my situation.  He spoke with the lodge owner.  We learned that his daughter had been successfully treated at the village clinic for her own constipation problem resulting from an overdose of bananas.

At 12:30 pm, I left on foot for the village clinic with an entourage: John, Tanka, Dilli, the lodge owner, and his small daughter.  The nurse was a young, beautiful, Nepalese woman who was all business.  But apparently, she didn’t have any of the magic suppositories or laxative that supposedly cured the little girl in 30 minutes.

Instead, John and I went into a large treatment room with a mattress like exam table.  I was instructed to lie on my side facing the wall.  A plastic tarp was placed under my midsection to more or less funnel fluid into a basin on the floor.  The health assistant and her younger male assistant stirred a bar of soap in hot water in a metal pitcher to create a solution that she began to inject with a plastic syringe into my butt.  I would get an urge after several injections and release mostly soapy water.  Eventually particulates of feces came out with the soapy water, but no major stool.  So for lack of an alternative the enema procedure was repeated over and over and over again.  This went on for 4 ½ hours!

Two hours into the ordeal the bucket of warm soapy water had been used up.  This allowed me to take a break and shift to my other side, thus soaking my shirt fully with the pooey fluid I was lying in all this time!  Upon resuming the procedure with a new bucket, the water was so hot it burned my rectum and caused me to scream.  Could this get any worse?

Eventually the friction of the syringe going in and out irritated my anus to the point that I couldn’t stand it any longer.  Once we agreed to put an end to the procedure, the clinicians simply left the room without instructions and without leaving us with something to clean me up.  The treatment area was a hygiene nightmare and so was I.  It was all John could do to get a roll of gauze and a basin of water from them.  He scrubbed the dried feces off of my body with the gauze, getting sloppy brown water all over his hands.  He saved me.  I don’t know if I had the energy to take care of myself.

Kinja from above (clinic is horizontal
building center right)

Thank goodness that John was so amazingly supportive during the entire disgusting procedure, letting me know what was happening, checking in with the nurse and assistant, and turning away strangers who would wander in and gawk at the spectacle of my backside! 

Thankfully I released more feces into the bowl while I was getting ready to head back to the lodge.  FINALLY I had relief!  Tanka brought me sandals and a blanket to wrap around myself for the walk back to the lodge.  Exhausted, I slowly returned and made my way down to the so-called shower room, a cave like structure where I took a warm bucket shower.  I rested in bed and had a good night’s sleep in preparation for our six-hour walk up to Goyem (3220 m) the next day.

Although the clinic was nowhere near our Western standard of care, I feel fortunate to have arrived in a village with any clinic at all.  Under other circumstances a helicopter evacuation might have been required, ruining our trip.  At the first opportunity we will purchase a stronger laxative for our med kit!
- Eydie