Taking Care of Business
Skip this if you're eating.
Sometimes it’s grounding to take on something small and solvable. Ergo, I collected my stool sample for an annual colorectal cancer screening.
I got the test kit back in December and it’s been guilting me from a shelf in my bathroom cabinet ever since. I ignored it until this morning, when it hit me that I can’t control Trump’s mouth, guns, or climate change. I don’t know whether Social Security will run out, or if the bra I ordered on Amazon will be a piece of shit.
Speaking of, why I have been so loath to collect it is a mystery, because sure it’s gross, but no big deal. My reluctance may stem from the first time I was asked to provide a waste sample. It was urine, I was nine, and my pediatrician handed me a plastic cup the size of a medium juice glass and shooed me into the bathroom with instructions to pee into it. A pleaser, I gave it my all, filling the glass to the brim and then some. The look on his nurse’s face when I set it sloshing onto her desk is something I will never forget, along with the derisive booming of said pediatrician’s laughter.
This morning I opened the test kit, read the directions, and followed them exactly. Using the small plastic impaler provided, I stabbed at the stool from multiple angles (think Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh in the shower scene from “Psycho”). The impaler and its poo vestiges went into the secure sample bottle, wrapped in protective plastic, and placed delicately in the cardboard envelope provided.
When life feels like a game of dodge ball, what you crave is control. What simple task can I initiate and complete? This morning, I opened my bathroom cabinet and there was my answer. I got this, I told myself, only too happy to put it behind me.