[besson3c]

Anybody? Is it true that it stays in your stomach forever?

[Railroader]

CNN HOUSE CALL WITH DR. SANJAY GUPTA says "no"

http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0409/18/hcsg.00.html

Checking the "Daily Dose" quiz we asked, if you swallow chewing gum, it would stay in your stomach for seven years, true or false.

The answer is false. Chewing gum will usually pass through your digestive system without sticking your inside together like your mother said.

[Face Ache]

But you could glue your underpants to your arse by farting.

[Railroader]

Not if you ate peanut butter. It breaks down the gum faster.

Well, atleast it works good in getting gum out of hair.

[Face Ache]

Ah the old "can I rub peanut butter on your hairy arse" trick.

You're not fooling me with that one twice!

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Railroader

Not if you ate peanut butter. It breaks down the gum faster.

Well, atleast it works good in getting gum out of hair.

So, do you swallow?


(I never thought I'd be asking you that)

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Originally Posted by Face Ache

Ah the old "can I rub peanut butter on your hairy arse" trick.

You're not fooling me with that one twice!

*uncontrollable laughter*



greg

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by besson3c

So, do you swallow?


(I never thought I'd be asking you that)

I don't do gum.

[besson3c]

I can't believe I'm the only one here that has discovered pleasure in the wonderful past time of swallowing gum?

[kcmac]

I always swallow gum. It definitely passes. I don't take pleasure in it. I just seem to notice that all of a sudden, I am not chewing anymore.

[turtle777]

I heard that swollowed gums will leave residue in your brains...

-t

[BlueSky]

Originally Posted by kcmac

I always swallow gum. It definitely passes. I don't take pleasure in it. I just seem to notice that all of a sudden, I am not chewing anymore.

[besson3c]

I wish gum grew on Sweet Gum trees.

[Ozmodiar]

Your stomach is acidic enough to dissolve an iron nail. The acid is so concentrated, you get (make) a new stomach every three days because the inside wall gets eaten away.

Gum does not stay in your stomach forever.

[Mr Kino]

Originally Posted by kcmac

I always swallow gum. It definitely passes. I don't take pleasure in it. I just seem to notice that all of a sudden, I am not chewing anymore.

Same here.

[CMYKid]

I've thrown away less than ten pieces in my entire life.

The rest get swallowed.

[Judge_Fire]

Originally Posted by Face Ache

But you could glue your underpants to your arse by farting.

But the bubbles are so pretty!

J

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by besson3c

I can't believe I'm the only one here that has discovered pleasure in the wonderful past time of swallowing gum?

It being MacNN I am sure there ar...

er n/m you said gum.

[Face Ache]

Originally Posted by kcmac

It definitely passes. I don't take pleasure in it. I just seem to notice that all of a sudden, I am not chewing anymore.

Oh, I thought that was dancing.

[Atomic Rooster]

Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour
Lonnie Donegan & His Skiffle Group

Oh-me, oh-my, oh-you
Whatever shall I do
Hallelujah, the question is peculiar
I'd give a lot of dough
If only I could know
The answer to my question
Is it yes or is it no

Does your chewing gum lose its flavour
On the bedpost overnight
If your mother says don't chew it
Do you swallow it in spite
Can you catch it on your tonsils
Can you heave it left and right
Does your chewing gum lose its flavour
On the bedpost overnight

Here comes a blushing bride
The groom is by her side
Up to the altar
Just as steady as Gibraltar
Why, the groom has got the ring
And it's such a pretty thing
But as he slips it on her finger
The choir begins to sing

Does your chewing gum lose its flavour
On the bedpost overnight
If your mother says don't chew it
Do you swallow it in spite
Can you catch it on your tonsils
Can you heave it left and right
Does your chewing gum lose its flavour
On the bedpost overnight

Now the nation rise is one
To send their only son
Up to the White House
Yes, the nation's only White House
To voice their discontent
Unto the Pres-I-dent
They pawn the burning question
What has swept this continent

(Lonnie speaks)
If tin whistles are made of tin
What do they make fog horns out of
Boom, boom

Does your chewing gum lose its flavour
On the bedpost overnight
If your mother says don't chew it
Do you swallow it in spite
Can you catch it on your tonsils
Can you heave it left and right
Does your chewing gum lose its flavour
On the bedpost overnight

[JoshuaZ]

mmm... gum.

Does it make you ass minty of you swallow it?

[Face Ache]

Minty fresh! Gives you a ring of confidence!

[aberdeenwriter]

Someone sent me this story. I can't vouch for it's authenticity but it is instructive and though a bit lengthy, is very funny.

This is the confession of a male gum-swallower.

I admit it. For as long as I can remember, I have always
swallowed my bubblegum instead of throwing it out. This used to be
a major subject of contention with my mother when I was a child, as
she was convinced that the practice would lead to my untimely
demise.

The gum mass was indigestible according to her, you see, and
as such could not pass properly through the gastrointestinal tract.
I was at great risk of numerous medical conditions because of this
questionable assertion, including "twisted intestines," "stomach
pileup," and choking to death on my own vomit after the bubblegum
body inevitably attempts to escape through my oesophagus, closing
the pipes indefinitely on the way out.


Naturally, I never believed a single word the old lady said.
I've been a gum-swallower my entire life, right up until my
mid-20s. It was only then that I experienced a veritable epiphany
of how wise my mother may actually have been.

Several weeks ago, I purchased a fairly large quantity of
Dubble Bubble for my daughter's gum ball machine. The amount of gum
I acquired was directly proportional to my own developed taste for
the product, since it resembled crack cocaine in addictiveness.
After originally buying the pre-filled gum ball machine, I'd
proceeded to consume almost the entire contents in just a few short
days, and thought I'd better stock up on the stuff if I was to
maintain a positive relationship with my young child.

Unfortunately, much like Al Pacino in "Scarface," when
confronted with such a sizeable amount of pseudo-cocaine, I
attacked it with relish. I practically lived off bubblegum for
several days. I couldn't get enough. I ate six, seven, sometimes
eight small globes at a time in an attempt to find the perfect mix
of synthetic flavours.

I studied the texture of chewed gum by placing the most
perfect tooth and fingerprint impressions ever taken outside of a
crime lab. I watched with fascination as I created drab shades of
grey from the most myriad selection of brightly colored items. I
was almost a scientist of bubblegum by the end of those few days,
you see. And each experiment became yet another lump lying heavy on
my stomach.

Alas, I was destined for trouble. After consuming such a
vast quantity of bubblegum, certain bodily processes started to
become strange. My bowel movements rotated from frequent to nearly
constipated for several days. For the life of me, I couldn't
predict at what point the need to **** would attack. When I did
plop down to plop, both the defecation process and the subsequent
wiping would seem almost...

Sticky.

This went on for another day or two. It was only then that
an event occurred that would change my philosophy on gum swallowing
forever. Perhaps the bolus of evil had lodged itself in my colon
somewhere just as my mother claimed it would, or perhaps the
passing of such hideousness naturally requires an extended length
of time; I fear I will never know the answer. All I know is that
during an otherwise perfectly normal evening of watching television
and reading a book, the cramps began.

I'm reasonably confident that I know what childbirth feels
like now. It felt as though my colon was uncoiling and recoiling
itself within my abdomen. I rushed to the bathroom and sat down,
expecting a torrent of acidic pain. Ah, if only I'd been so lucky!
When the defecation came, it felt as though it came out sideways.
My sphincter cried out in agony, the toilet sang in joy at the
miracle it was about to receive. When I regained consciousness and
brought myself to the point of wiping, I discovered the true horror
of the evening.

Before continuing, I consider it necessary to make one
qualification. I possess a rather... how you say, furry posterior.
I freely admit this. I am a man of gum swallowing and a hairy ass.
A hairy ass that was now virtually plastered with partially
digested bubblegum.

If you've ever tried to get gum out of the hair on your
head, you'll understand the conundrum that I was in. Once bubble
gum has attached itself to the hair follicle, the two are
inseparable. Inseparable like night and day. Inseparable like my
****ing ASS CHEEKS now were, welded together with a mass of rapidly
hardening cement.

After realizing what had happened, I understandably wished
to keep the gravity of the situation private. One does not glue his
ass cheeks together with fecal bubblegum and spread the proverbial
word, you see. And so, I sat and thought. Thought HARD. What do you
do? How am I going to get myself out of this one?

Okay, let's think about this. We have an uneven mass of
bubblegum in the ass hair. It needs to come out, obviously. But
how do you get gum out of hair? I recall someone telling me that
peanut butter is the only recourse. No, **** that, I'm not making a
goddamn sandwich in my ass. The thought of slathering brown sludge
in with other brown sludge was not appealing.

Well, option number one: rip it out. ****in' old school,
yo!!. So, using a small strip of toilet paper as a ****-shield, I
grabbed a lump of the offending plaster and yanked.

WELL HOLY BUGGERY DUCKNUTS, BATMAN! That made my eyes water
and my skull expand. Option number one is officially discarded,
along with a healthy strip of my taint. Where do we go from here?

Well, maybe option number one isn't *totally* flawed. I'll
take a shower! That'll loosen it up, right?

WRONG.

The bubblegum has become ONE with my ass hair now. They are
no longer separate entities by any stretch of the imagination. They
are joined at the ****ing cellular level. Their electrons circle
each other in a spinning mass of beauty and PAIN.

Damnit, now what? The taint is an area of the body far too
sensitive to have hair ripped from it. You might as well expect me
to rip off my goddamn arm to scratch an itch on my finger.

It was around then that I came to the only logical
conclusion. We have to *shave* it out, old bean. I'm sorry, dear
sweet anus, but it's the only way. But what shall I shave it with,
dear Liza, dear Liza?

I can't use the hand razor I shave my face with, certainly;
would I be able to shear my whiskers every morning while knowing
where it had been? That microglobs of poo-gum were being ground
into my cheeks and neck?

No, certainly not! I do, however, have a small beard trimmer
that might do the job. It was only a few dollars at Wal-Mart, after
all; I can ****ing burn it when I'm done. Alrighty then, pants off,
left leg up on the sink, offending mass of bubblegum presented
comfortably, mirror positioned on the floor to help me aim. Okay,
razor on, let's do this thing!

OH GOD ITS STUCK

Well isn't this wonderful, the undeniable reflex to jump and
run from pain has kicked in! I'm now hopping around the bathroom
with this two inch electric razor jammed firmly into my ass,
dangling around like some sort of freakish technological tail.

The forces of physics have turned on me now. Gravity pulls
the razor down as the momentum of my pain dance spins and twists it
ever further into the tenderness of my crack. Screams begin to
emerge through my gritted teeth. I try desperately to avoid waking
my child and/or alerting my delightfully unsuspicious wife. After
all, what would I tell them?

"Are you okay, dear?"

"Daddy, what's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing much. I tried to shave the bubblegum out of my
ass, and now I'm waving the razor around like a second penis. Don't
mind me, go back to sleep!"

Okay, ****, I've calmed myself down. I cradle the offending
piece of plastic and agony in an attempt to reduce the pressure on
my tormented rectum. Well now you're in a real pickle, eh? You
thought it couldn't get any worse, didn't you?

It was around this point that I started to get my head on
straight. One must keep in mind how difficult it is to employ
high-level cognitive abilities when one is experiencing pain in his
most sensitive of areas. Thankfully, my wits had returned.

The razor wasn't going to come out. I was faced with several
options: A) Shave it out. B) Cut it out.

Solution A wasn't viable since I'd already destroyed my only
non-vital razor. The only problem with B was that there were no
scissors in the bathroom; in fact, the only scissors I could think
of were down the hall, within the cutlery drawer of the kitchen. My
wife was using the computer in the living room, and could very
likely see the bathroom door...

Yet the pros greatly outweighed the cons.

So, hopping like a crippled dog, I held the electric beard
trimmer firmly against my battered ass hair and fumbled my way down
the hall, praying to any possible deities that my wife wouldn't
take this occasion to come get a snack or a glass of water. There
was no answer for the situation I was in. The fates decided to
smile upon me, I suppose. It seems perfectly reasonable that they
would, of course, since they'd taken it upon themselves to so
thoroughly destroy my sanity up until that point. I managed to
duck-walk my way back to the bathroom, and with a carefulness that
only a surgeon could appreciate, delicately extracted the clipper
from myself.

Using the scissors, it didn't take all that long to snip
away the majority of my post-gum. I shaved two long swaths into my
ass, in fact, which resulted in the most agonizing discomfort over
the next few days. Imagine rubbing two sheets of coarse sandpaper
together. Then imagine a thin coat of unabsorbed poop-sweat turning
the whole thing into a circus of embarrassment and skid marks. If
there's a deep and philosophical message to be found in what I've
written, it's lost on me.

All I know is that under no circumstances should you ever...
EVER... swallow your bubblegum

[dcmacdaddy]

I used to swallow bubble gum but then when I farted the bubbles would come out my
ass and that's no longer accepted in the workplace. So, no gum-swallowing for me.

[TheoCryst]

I don't chew gum in the first place... it just has never appealed to me. I'm more of an Altoid guy, anyway.

[subego]

Did hear once that there's a slight chance of it causing an intestinal blockage.

Never swallowed since, why take the risk?

[Cubeoid]

Cubeoid throws gum away.

[aberdeenwriter]

Originally Posted by subego

Did hear once that there's a slight chance of it causing an intestinal blockage.

Never swallowed since, why take the risk?

Read long funny post above.

[subego]

That's not a long intestinal blockage story

This is.

JAR JAR BINKS HOSPITALIZED ME!
-or-

REVENGE OF THE CITROMA!

True story of Kibo's afternoon
Sunday, May 23, 1999

You may recall that late Thursday night (Friday morning) I taste-tested the "Jar Jar Binks Monster Mouth Tongue Candy", a "Star Wars" toy with candy in the back of its mouth that you can only eat by French-kissing it. And while I was attempting to eat one of these -- just for you people -- I was suddenly struck by massive diarrhea.

Well, it's now late Sunday night, and I just got back from the hospital emergency ward. This will be a long and twisty story detailing how I got from Jar Jar Binks to a life-threatening medical matter.

I hadn't had anything else to eat right before the deadly Jar Jar tongue pop, except for a single blue gummi shark from the same candy store. About three hours before, I had two chicken patties and a bowl of fresh chicken soup, and about eight hours before, I had some roast chicken with corn and noodles and beans (hey, Thursday is chicken night, Friday is REAL MEAT night!) but other than the shark, nothing was close enough to the consumption of my Jar Jar pop to be a possible cause of the diarrhea. I'll rule out the shark because I have more of those sharks and they seem to be harmless constructs of colored gelatin, and besides, the diarrhea had red tongue-colored bits in it, not blue shark-colored bits.

The diarrhea came in tidal waves every twenty minutes or so all night. Then it stopped. And so did everything else. After nothing else wanted to come out of my butt (no matter what I put in, including six White Castles, my favorite intestinal lubricant) I realized that I had a near-total intestinal blockage. Whatever was stuck in there was irritating my intestine, causing the "paradoxical diarrhea" (the technical term for diarrhea caused by constipation.) So, in the wake of Jar Jar, I was hit with a day of diarrhea, followed by a couple days of my abdomen getting bigger and bigger and making lots of noises.

I tried the usual remedies, which you don't want to know about (two involved mineral oil, one of which involved drinking mineral oil) and absolutely nothing was forthcoming (although a little gas could squeeze around the blockage with great effort.) My intestines were tighter than Penn Jilette's cummerbund.

Over the weekend I considered going to the hospital to see if the doctors could roto-root away whatever was lodged in there, but of course that would be expensive (I don't have health insurance because Michael Moore isn't doing a very good job of making Hillary Clinton give me health insurance.) I looked through the Yellow Pages for all the proctologists in the entire metropolitan area, and there was one (in Newton) and nobody answered their phone when I called on Saturday afternoon. (Apparently The Last Surviving Proctologist can't afford an answering machine.) I stood on my head and jumped up and down and bought one of everything that was cheap at the local drugstore. But still the intestinal barricade would not yield.

Finally, on Sunday afternoon, I took the subway down to Massachusetts General Hospital -- where Michael Crichton was an intern when he was writing bad science fiction where he demonstrated he has no clue how things like bacteria work, and where the scientist in "Altered States" took the magical drugs that made him sparkle -- and checked myself into the emergency department. (Contrary to expectations, Crichton's hospital does not have an NBC-style ER, they have an ED, which made me worry that Bob Dole was going to be handing out Viagra.) On the way in I noticed the carefully-hidden plaque which said "THE CODE FOR FIRE IS 'DRILL', NEVER SAY 'FIRE'!" (This is a violation of my First Amendment rights! But fortunately it wasn't important because they didn't have a theater.)

I talked to the triage nurse, who took my blood pressure and temperature (which was 97 Fahrenheit, which is low even for me -- I'm usually more like 98.2) and asked what was wrong. I described in detail, miming actions with my hands and making all the sound effects. She asked me if I had any vomiting. I said "Not yet."

Then they told me to drop my form into the black bin at Admissions. I made the mistake of putting my form on top, because they always take the one on the bottom first in an effort to take people in the order they came in -- next time I'll slip my form under the others. They couldn't tell me whether or not I was eligible for Free Care because the guy didn't know where the poverty line was, so he had me fill out an application (I don't think I qualify...) and, amazingly, the hospital database knew my current address. Which is odd, given that the only other time I was there (with the infected finger which drained itself during the four hours I was in the waiting room, so I walked out) I lived elsewhere. I suspect that, because I walked out last time, it screwed up their database, because they started mailing me bills for my breast cancer and learning disability. I never paid them, and the bills stopped coming, but I suspect someone at their collection department tracked down my address when I moved. Anyway, the clerk at the Admissions desk printed out a blue hospital ID card for me (oddly, I didn't get the wristband promised in the "About Emergency Services" instructional propaganda leaflet.)

After waiting in the waiting room a little while (only about five minutes), a nurse fetched me and bade me follow her down the blue line to the Multi(purpose) part of the ED. (MGH's ED is split into Trauma, Major, Minor, and Multi, and I think they put you in Multi when they don't know whether you're Major or Minor.) During the walk, she asked what was wrong with me, and I described it again, and she asked if I had any vomiting, and I said "Not yet."

She had me take off my clothes, except for my underwear and socks (bringing to mind an old Morecambe & Wise comedy routine, but never mind.) Then I waited in my room, Bay 10 of the ED Multi area, for a doctor.

The first thing I noticed about the room was how messy it was. The supplies were a little cluttered and piled, sort of like in the average suburban garage. There was a Tootsie Roll wrapper on the floor (to taunt me?) Most intriguing was the large red BIOHAZARD trash can with the bright yellow puddle around its base. (I think it was Betadine or Phisoderm or one of those other doctors' hand cleansers that stains your skin the color of Vlasic brine.) Somewhere within hearing, something was going "BOOP!" once every one and a half seconds.

The desk clerk at the nurses' station brought me an ID card -- identical in every respect to the one the Admissions clerk had given me, and my nurse came back and fastened a matching ID bracelet around my wrist. (They used to use plastic bands fastened with adhesive strips to prevent you from taking them off until you got home, because everyone knows there are no scissors in hospitals. The new ones are still uncuttable plastic, but now they're fastened with a one-way plastic snap that looks like a tiny translucent Altoids box.)

A doctor came in, accompanied by two studious interns who also had stethoscopes, and one guy who didn't and just hung around in the corner. (I think he just liked to watch.) The doctor asked me what was wrong, and I told him, and he asked if I had any vomiting, and I said "Not yet." (As in "I've read the medical literature and I know that if I eat anything more the poop will back up into my stomach and I'll throw up all over the place and go insane.) He then proceeded to examine me -- while my underwear was still on -- while describing the process to the two interns with stethoscopes. (He ignored the lurker.) All three of them put their microphones on my belly at the same time to listen to my borborygmi (bowel gurgles), listening for the evil "tweaks" and "whooshes" that signal a complete obstruction (which I didn't have because I could barely pass gas.) He shook the gurney I was lying on to see if that caused any discomfort, he pressed different areas of my belly (presumably to see if my leg started rotating like a dog's), and then tapped every spot on my belly to see if there were any air pockets that sounded "hollow." He announced that all he was getting from my belly were "dead noises", which was apparently good, although it included a word that should have been substituted with something like "drill". I hoped that he wasn't going to ask all the interns (except the slacker) to shove their fingers up my butt to look for the impacted feces (which is what the medical literature says to do) but they let me keep my underwear on the whole time. They left as a group, and the slacker thanked me for letting him watch me, then the two actual interns thanked me.

Next came more waiting, followed by a visit from another doctor. He asked me what was wrong, and I told him, then he asked me if I had had any vomiting, and I said "Not yet." He poked my belly a few times and ordered Upper GI films of me, then left.

Here's where the big adventure truly began.

An orderly came and wheeled my gurney down the hall (through about six pairs of double doors that had to be buzzed open -- they don't just bang through them like on TV, darn it) to Radiology. I marveled at the fact that the moment you arrive, because they have to treat everyone the same so as not to have to remember which patients can walk and which can't, they automatically slap you on a gurney, then they put the crib-like sides up to remind you that you shouldn't get out and try to go anywhere under your own power. They wheeled me down the hall into Radiology, where I encountered an X-Ray technician and a wacky senior X-Ray technician. (He was the only "funny" doctor I met that day, thankfully. Humor about people's innards belongs on the Internet, not around the actual innards.)

They took an X-ray of my abdomen while I was standing up (with my back against this glass panel with half-size geometric lungs shaped like Utah drawn on it) and another of my abdomen lying down. (Both X-ray machines were made by Siemens, so if all my sperm suddenly mutate, watch for the semen vs. Siemens lawsuit.) The X-ray machine's articulation joints squeaked as the "funny" technician maneuvered it, and he said, "You think it needs oil?" and I said "I think I need it more." He didn't laugh either.

NOTHING IS FUNNY IN A HOSPITAL, WHERE ONLY LAME JOKES ARE ALLOWED!

While they were X-raying me, they stuck one of those little plaques behind me with lead "L" and "R" markers on it so they could tell which way my guts where facing when they were photographed. They did not make me take my underwear off, despite the fact that I was wearing BVDs whose waistband was presumably changing the shape of my belly a little, and was probably at least as optically opaque as the farts they were photographing.

After two exposures, let me lie around in Radiology for a few minutes while they developed the X-rays (in case they didn't come out right because my stomach blinked when the flash went off, they wanted to keep me around to pose some more) and then when they were ready another orderly came to take me back to Bay 10.

This orderly wasn't too skilled at pushing my gurney (he kept bumping things) and he spent the trip muttering to himself constantly, in a monologue consisting mainly of swear words.

As we entered the ED, I saw a doctor saying into a telephone, "This is (name) in Major. One of the patients in Seclusion got out of one of her restraints..." Apparently they refer to the loony lock-down area as "Seclusion", so never ever check yourself into a sanitarium to get some seclusion.

Arriving at Bay 10 again, I waited a little while, then the second doctor (the one without the gaggle of interns) came back to ask if I'd had my X-rays. I said I had, and he disappeared to go read them (they didn't let me see them.) After a while, he came back and said that, basically, the X-rays said I was full of ****. I thought everyone on the Internet knew that, but apparently they wanted to check that my intestine didn't have a bow-tie knot or a gerbil in it. (I bet they thought "We better check everyone, JUST IN CASE we actually find a gerbil someday, because that would make us famous!") Of course I had figured all along that it was just impacted feces in the lower rectum (I mean, I could feel 'em not coming out when I tried to poop) but you know how doctors are when you self-diagnose: If you "present" with a bleeding forehead, they give you stitches and check for concussion. If you "present" with a bleeding forehead and say "I THINK I ALSO HAVE A CONCUSSION BECAUSE MY BRAIN HAS A LARGE OBVIOUS DENT IN IT," then they will refuse to check for concussion.

(I will go down to the Medical Records office to buy my X-rays if you people REALLY want to see my intestines on a Web page. Hmm, if so, they should have clickable hot spots.)

The doctor left, and I waited a while, then the nurse came back to tell me that the doctor had ordered a laxative and "some enemas" for me. "Some"? It would have been more reassuring if they had said "a couple" or "a few" or "several" or "a number with less than eight digits" rather than "some", which left open the possibility that they wanted to give me A MILLION BILLION TRILLION ENEMAS.

(So the guy drops dead on the stage and someone yells "Is there a doctor in the house?" and as he's running to the stage this matron in the back yells "GIVE THAT MAN AN ENEMA!" All the time he's examining the guy who dropped dead, she keeps yelling "GIVE THAT MAN AN ENEMA!" Finally, the doctor yells back, "Lady, this man is dead! An enema won't help!" and she says, "WELL, IT COULDN'T HURT!")

Anyway, she told me that the laxative was something I would allegedly enjoy -- "it's like a soft drink, it's a sparkling laxative."

OH NO! CITROMA!

For those of you who don't know, Citroma is The Sparkling Laxative, a magnesium citrate solution sold in pint bottles at drugstores everywhere (sometimes in generic form, but it always comes out of the Citroma factory because the bottles always have that same logo stamped into them.) It comes in four flavors, all of which taste "citrus"-ish, because it's magnesium citrate, which is a relative of citric acid. Citric acid is what makes candy taste lemony and sour (think of Sour Patch Kids); adding a sodium or magnesium atom to make a salt gives you either sodium citrate (the chief flavoring of Orbitz and Alka-Seltzer) or magnesium citrate (which tastes the same, except with more laxative effect than even Orbitz.)

God was punishing me again.

First God punished me for buying a "Star Wars" toy by making it give me diarrhea and an intestinal obstruction which would hospitalize me.

Then, for making Citroma the first item I put on my "Don't Eat This" Web page and saying mean things about it, God punished me by making me drink Citroma. In my underwear.

(HOW THE CITROMA GOT INTO MY-- sorry.)

The nurse left, and I waited and waited for my Citroma. I waited over half an hour for that damn Citroma. I was mentally yelling "WHERE IS MY CITROMA?", which may perhaps be the only time in my life I will ever WANT Citroma. I was about to open up all the sterile bandage packages out of spite when she came back with a plastic cup with a pint of sparkling laxative, with crushed ice and a bendy straw. For the next half-hour, I sat there sipping Citroma through the straw as trauma cases were wheeled past for my amusement.

(It wasn't actually Citroma but some hospital-made solution of straight magnesium citrate, because it didn't have any food coloring in it to try to fool me into thinking it was "lemon" or "lemon-lime" or "orange" or "cherry", though it tasted exactly like lemonoid Citroma or Orbitz. Well, okay, it didn't have lumps, so call it Orbitz without the zitz.)

[subego]

At one point, I heard them page Security, summoning them to Seclusion with "more restraints". A little while later, I saw them taking the mystery patient from Seclusion down the hall to be X-rayed. Remember Anthony Hopkins in "Silence of the Lambs"? Now imagine he's sedated so that he's reduced to Dom DeLuise in "Silence of the Hams". As they wheeled this guy past on a gurney, they had a sheet covering him from just below the eyes down to his shins, but his eyes had an interesting mixture of evil and sedation. The sheet was presumably to keep the rest of us from staring at the major bondage gear, whatever it was -- and I could see that his feet were encased in some sort of clear plastic. I figured the guy was in a big Zip-Loc mummy bag or something. Also probably a disposable hospital straitjacket made out of Tyvek with the same closure as the wristbands.

An orderly was pushing Mr. Evil's gurney, and one Security man was in front and two in back. They had walkie-talkies, tan slacks, navy-blue blazers, and rubber gloves. There's nothing that conveys "totalitarian state" as much as a uniformed security officer with rubber gloves. (I'm sure Disneyland has these guys.)

A little later, an orderly brought back the gurney without the evil patient or the sheet -- and it did indeed have big leather wrist-straps attached to the side rails. Shortly thereafter, a guy in work clothes ambled in with a double handful of wads of leather straps (looked a full set of horse tackle for humans) and asked them where to stow the restraints, and a staffer directed him to place them in "the red bucket over there". So next time you're in Seclusion, watch out -- they've got buckets of bondage gear!

(I have no clue if the guy was a criminal or just a psychotic person, but there were lots of restraints involved, even more than in that photo of Mary Tyler Moore whipping Dick Van Dyke.)

I finished the Citroma and waited a while longer for the nurse to come back. I read my charts that were lying on the counter. Someone had rated me on the Coma Scale: I got high marks for having my eyes open, being able to carry on a conversation, and being able to move. They had even checked off the size of my pupils and the number of respirations per minute. I think maybe the triage nurse did this clandestinely while she was asking me whether or not I had had vomiting. Or maybe they just guessed at some point after they decided I was normal.

Eventually the nurse came back with two small bottled enemas (the squeezable kind you would expect to contain hot dog toppings) which she referred to as "Fleet's" enemas. First of all, there's no "'s" in "Fleet" brand enemas, and secondly, these were a different brand. That was fine by me because I give enough money to Fleet whenever I use my ATM card at Fleet Bank.

She directed me to go down the hall to the bathroom and give myself an enema. Or two. (Couldn't hurt.) I was amazed that I had waited all this time for a bottle of Citroma (which you can buy anywhere for $1.59) and a pair of boxed laxatives (which you can buy anywhere -- and I had, over the weekend -- for $2 each) which they weren't even going to administer professionally. Basically, I was paying them to let me use their bathroom to do the same stuff I could have done at home. Heck, if I'm going to pay to get an enema (please have no illusions that I wanted one) I want one administered by someone who's good at it and who gives top-notch, super-gigantic, electrically-heated enemas, not a little squeeze bulb I have to jam into my own ass by feel. (The directions on the box tell you to lie face down [on the bathroom floor?] and have someone else do it. They also say "FOR RECTAL USE ONLY" in case you're REALLY stupid.)

So I put some water up my butt and then the water came out, and a little other stuff came out too. Not much, but I think the Citroma was starting to soften my stools a little. As well as making my stomach hurt. I mean, it was a full pint of citric acid. It was like I had just eaten 500 Sour Patch Kids. (It was pretty hard to choke down all that Citroma. And keep in mind that it tastes like Sour Patch Kids plus salt.)

The bathrooms didn't smell like licorice (world's most annoying disinfectant?) the way they had on my infected-finger time-waster visit.

Anyway, I ambled back to Bay 10 and waited forty-five minutes for the nurse to reappear. I told her I had had only minimal doodies and that all the White Castles and curry and meat loaf and other stuff from the past three days were still in there somewhere. She relayed this to the doctor, came back, and said they were sending me home because it looked like the Citroma was starting to work and would probably kick in later.

She gave me another enema (in a box) to take home and also wrote out a treatment plan for me:

1. Buy some Colace (an over-the-counter stool softener) and take it.
2. Buy some Dulcolax suppositories (over-the-counter laxatives of the most annoying kind) and use one in the morning if nothing's happened.
3. Buy some Metamucil (an over-the-counter blend of 99% tree bark and 1% Tang) and take some every day for the rest of my life just in case this ever happens again.
4. Use the boxed enema (which is called "Fleet's" in the written instructions).

So I put on my clothes (except my underwear, which I had never taken off -- odd that they made me take off all the clothes that didn't cover the part of my body that had the problem) and followed the blue stripe on the floor to the exit. On the way out, I noticed that the Pediatric department had smiling chimps painted on the door.

(Elapsed time during hospital visit: Four hours, same as it took for them not to treat my infected finger. What I got for my time and a big bill: Three enema kits and the world's most expensive glass of Citroma. And a requirement to buy three more things.)

I went down the street to the 24-hour CVS drugstore to buy the stuff, under the assumption that maybe I should try using some of it. They had a generic version of the Dulcolax bullets (I always get the cheapie ones), but not generic orange Metamucil (who would want the unflavored sawdust kind?) or the liquid version of Colace (I detest pills, and can only swallow them by accident, i.e. I can swallow whole Life Savers, I have never successfully swallowed a little pill.) The pharmacist was kind enough to place an order for some of the liquid Colace for me (to arrive in 24 hours) but I didn't want to wait that long, so I left the order and looked elsewhere for liquid Colace. (Hey, she didn't take my phone number, so she can't make me pick it up tomorrow.) I checked another CVS down the street, which was also missing the same stuff. So I took the subway to the Back Bay, which has other kinds of drugstores and was on the way home.

During the walk from Copley Station to the 24-hour Walgreen's (the only place that has non-cheez White Castle burgers, yay!) I stopped at the Store 24 there, because I'm seldom in any Store 24s, particularly this one, and I wanted to look for interesting snack foods. I saw that they had the blue flavor of Whipper Snapple (one of the many fake Orange Juliuses flooding a saturated market), and because I love anything that's blue flavor, and the blue Whipper Snapple is incredibly rare, I bought four.

(The blue Whipper Snapple is "Black And Blue Berry" flavor, allegedly. Whipper Snapple's ingredients, oddly enough, always include rosemary in each flavor. I have no idea what it's for, and it would certainly ruin it completely if you could taste it. They all basically taste like watered-down white grape juice with a few drops of milk.)

The store had about 30 bottles of the rare blue Whipper Snapple, and about three of each other flavor, so I'm obviously the only person in town who is willing to drink this stuff (it's not one of my favorites, but it's rare so I wanted it. Besides, I was out of juice and juice-like items at home.) Obviously the guy behind the cash register was aware that the Store 24 just couldn't get rid of the blue ones because when he saw me putting four on the counter he exclaimed "Oh, thank you!"

Then I went down the block to the Walgreen's drugstore, where they had the liquid Colace and generic orange Metamucil, both of which I bought, along with some frozen White Castles (a much more palatable laxative than Citroma.)

When I got home and opened the liquid Colace, it said that to prevent throat irritation it MUST be taken mixed with juice. WAAH! ALL MY BLUE DRINKS ARE GONNA BE LAXATIVE-FLAVORED!

Still, they taste about a skillion times less salty/citricy than Citroma.

I tried some of the Metamucil. Do senior citizens actually like the taste of this stuff? It's a really annoying texture: chaff slurry. With a sort of cardboard flavor that the Tang can't mask. I think maybe I'll just get my fiber from actual food instead. Besides, this problem will likely never recur, unless I make the mistake of buying more "Star Wars" candy.

Oh, and after you get three days' worth of White Castles and other yummy foods out of you through the cleaning power of Citroma, the White Castles have turned into something that could pass for coffee. If you don't taste it.

So the blockage seems to be clearing up, and I'm back to diarrhea. But unlike the original Jar Jar-induced diarrhea, now it's got fewer lumps than Orbitz. Because Citroma is Orbitz without the zitz.

-- K.

If you learned only one
thing from this article,
I hope it's the word
"borborygmi".

.

[Eriamjh]

Originally Posted by Ozmodiar

Your stomach is acidic enough to dissolve an iron nail. The acid is so concentrated, you get (make) a new stomach every three days because the inside wall gets eaten away.

Gum does not stay in your stomach forever.

Sorry, but you are not correct unless you can back this up.

And AFAIK, the inside wall of our stomach is not renewed every three days. The mucus lining the stomach protects it. When stomach acid starts eating your stomach walls, you get an ulcer or worse.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Cubeoid

Cubeoid throws gum away.

Cubeoid, very good!

[besson3c]

Well, you non-gum swallowers don't know what you are missing. I experience *great* pleasure in swallowing my gum, in fact some time it's almost orgasmic. I feel like I'm rebelling against society and the Man when I do that, and I'll about sticking it to the Man.

[BlueSky]

Originally Posted by besson3c

Well, you non-gum swallowers don't know what you are missing. I experience *great* pleasure in swallowing my gum, in fact some time it's almost orgasmic. I feel like I'm rebelling against society and the Man when I do that, and I'll about sticking it to the Man.

I'm all about sticking it under the table.

[wdlove]

Most wives' tails are false.

I threw my gum out though.