Jun. 14, 2015 - 10:00 a.m.

What's the Diff?

You know you're married - really married - when this happens:

"Honey, come look at my poop!"

And then this happens:

You don't run away.

So, that happened. Shortly after my last entry.

When NewWifey(tm) got slammed with diverticuliiiiiiiitis a while back she was reduced to eating nothing but jello and weak water for a month. It sucked because I was reduced to cooking nothing but jello and water for several weeks. But it was pretty awesome because she dropped, like, 24 pounds during that time. Not that NewWifey(tm) was fat to begin with, but skinnier is always better. Fuck Meghan Trainor...if you can get it up with something that fat, that is.

After a month NewWifey(tm) began supplementing her jello feedings with small bits of actual food. Mostly low fiber stuff, but at least she was able to start using her teeth for something other than clipping her nails again. Then in mid May, after reaching the bottom of yet another galvanized tub of orange flavored hoof gel, she announced "No more. I'm back on solids."

I was skeptical, but it was her body. As long as she didn't put on weight, it was her choice.

At first, it also seemed like it was the right choice. She even got approval from her gastroenterologist the next morning. So that night I set before her a small bowl of fettuccine Alfredo and a few roast asparagus spears, and stood back. If there was an explosion I didn't want to get her colon all over me.

But there wasn't. She tucked in, finished everything in front of her, then sat back with her eyes closed. After about 5 minutes she opened her eyes and said, "I think I'm ok."

Yay!

"Do you want more?"

"No. I think my stomach shrunk. I'm full."

YAY!!

For a week it was bliss. I could make real food again AND she didn't get fat. It was just like never.

Then, at the start of Week 2, she exploded.

I hate to blame the victim when a crime has been committed, but it her own stupid fault. The one food - the ONE food - her doctor told her to avoid was: nuts. They were the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil that if she ate of it she would surely die. Or at least be reduced to eating nothing but orange flavored gelled cow hoofs for the rest of her days. Which was probably worse.

And she ate them.

She was at this stupid little tea room cafe where a bunch her friends meet up every Friday for lunch. This place specializes in cupcakes, and the featured flavor that day was "Orange Spice with Nutella Frosting". She ordered it.

What they placed down in front of her, along with a pot of Harney's "Paris" tea, was a beautiful orange and brown cupcake confection strewn with candied violet petals...and ground pistachios on top.

"Aren't you supposed to be avoiding nuts?" one of her friends asked. "Maybe you should send it back and get the vanilla buttercream."

"It's a cupcake" said NewWifey(tm). "Cupcakes would never hurt you. I'll be ok." And she popped it in her mouth.

When I got home from work that afternoon there was a note on the fridge. "Went to the E.R." was all it said.

I drove to the E.R.

The nurse told me the doctor had to have her admitted, and gave me the room number.

I went up to the 3rd floor, where she was laying in a semi-private broom closet at the end of the hall. She was hooked up to three IV bags and was the color of Rachel Dolezal. Very, very white.

"What happened??" I said.

NewWifey(tm) started crying. "Oh honey...a cupcake hurt me!" She put her head in her hands and sobbed. "I'm gonna have to eat jello now for the rest of mine days."

She stayed in the hospital for 4 days on an IV drip while her colon gradually stopped trying to kill her. When they released her the nurse handed me a bag filled with at least 9 different kinds of pills. "Make sure she takes them, even if the side effects make her uncomfortable" she said. "And remember: jello and water. Period, until her doctor tells her otherwise."

"Does this mean she's gonna lose more weight?" I asked her.

The nurse looked very sympathetic and laid a hand on my arm. "I'm sorry, but it's a good possibility."

I looked down at the floor.

YAY!!

So...back to breathing in jello dust morning noon and night. The only other calories NewWifey(tm) got was whatever was in the hopper of pills she had to force down every day. At least they were effective. The color gradually came back to her face and elsewhere, and the elastic waistband of her underwear didn't make her scream in agony any more.

And then, on Thursday....

"Honey, come look at my poop!"

"...ok."

I looked down in the bowl. Other than a few shreds of ragged toilet paper, I didn't see anything else.

"Where is it?" I asked her. "All I see is toilet paper and pee."

"That's not toilet paper" she said. "That's what I pooped out."

I looked closer. God help me, I looked closer. And when I did I could see that, indeed, the white shreds were not lengths of recently used toilet paper. They were clouds of diaphanous white mucous slowly and gracefully gyrating in their sea of amber.

"That came out of your ass?" I asked.

NewWifey(tm) nodded. "And look at this." And she stuck out her tongue.

I recoiled in horror. The front and sides of her tongue were now a neon cherry color, but that was nowhere near as alarming as the rest of it. The center of her tongue was brown towards the front, and bright, bright green in the back. But that still wasn't the worst of it. This was: the green part was furry! And not just like a light fuzzy coating. We're talking almost long enough to braid here. This was serious shit.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'd rather look at my wife's poop than her tongue.

I sighed. "C'mon, we're going back to the hospital."

I'll spare you the rest of the hairy details and jump right to the spoiler.

C-Diff. Clostridium difficile. A bacterial infection usually caused by taking a trough full of antibiotics. The kind of antibiotics they prescribe for Diverticuliiiiiitis that you get from eating an Orange Nutella Cupcake with ground pistachios on top. The antibiotics kill the evil Death Star germs that are trying to destroy your colon, and everything else in your gut as well. Including the Good Guy bacteria that keeps the clostridium difficile from setting up shop and turning your poop into egg drop soup and your tongue into a Wookie. (And admit it guys, we've all wondered what a hairy tongue would feel like, right? I passed the idea in front of NewWifey(tm), but no dice. I won't bother describing the look of scorn.)

So now she's on MORE horse sized pills, and lying inert in the recliner for the next few days til this current bout of intestinal pyrotechnics simmers down. But at least it hasn't been too hard on me, and that's the important thing. Sure, it sucks having to make orange jello again every day for the foreseeable future. And it looks like by the time she's ready to be saddled up and ridden the silky tongue fronds will be long gone. But at least she hasn't gotten fat. So I can handle the hardships.

Ok, gotta go gel more cow hoof.

Ciao, kids. Go nuts.

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