A MEMOIR

Pardon Me? They Didn’t Hear You at the Back

Alternate title: I need a stool

I had a lovely weekend of food poisoning.

So fun.

It reminded me of the last time I suffered this fate. Picture it — wait, don’t! — I was cruising the waterways in the clean Mexico City canal. A boat came by offering quesadillas. I said, YES! Wouldn’t you?

It was served on a china plate.

Fancy.

I thoroughly enjoyed the chicken quesadilla and it went great with a beer. No regrets, yet.

The boat passed us on the way back to our starting point, I handed them my plate and he rinsed it in the canal.

Hmmm.

He dried it with a dirty towel and placed a quesadilla on the surface that only moments ago was slapping in the brown water of the Mexico City canal. He yelled out in Spanish to the next boat about his amazing quesadillas.

He wasn’t wrong. They were amazing.

Weeks later, back on Canadian soil, my doctor asked me to scoop, smear and scrape fecal matter in as many ways as possible. I had lost about 12 pounds by then and felt I was good to stop my quesadilla diet any day now.

On smear day, I dropped the final of my two samples at the lab. The technician was clearly deaf and stupid — but I’m not judgy. You can make this assessment for yourself. Here is what ensued in a voice reserved for concerts and family Christmas dinners.

Me (whisper-regular voice): I am here to drop off these samples.

Tech (in concert voice opening the bag abruptly with a room full of people holding little white tags with numbers ranging from 35–68): What’s in here? Urine?

Me: No. (OK, I left it for her to figure out what was in the clear plastic jar. Maybe that was a mistake. She did work in a lab and presumably had seen poop before.)

Tech: Is this stool? What is stool doing in a urine container?

Me: That is what was given to me.

Tech: Stool shouldn’t be in a urine container.

Now screaming at the woman who was clearly training her and also sitting beside her.

Tech: Jessica, this woman has stool in a urine container.

Jessica (grabbing the bag and using her concert voice): Stool?

Tech: Yes stool.

Jessica: What kind of stool sample?

Me: (It took all my energy not to say “goat.”) Not sure what you are asking me, but the requisition should be in your system.

Jessica (removing said samples from the bag, holding it overhead, and reviewing my poop to the fluorescent light.): Oh, it’s a stool sample. It’s OK to have stool like this.

Me: Thanks??

Tech: Why would they put stool in a urine container?

Jessica: Because they needed a lot of stool.

Sadly, this was not the first time I had to endure public scrutiny for medical intervention.

I remember the acne days and waiting forever to get an appointment with the only dermatologist in town. He worked out of an old house with the living room as his waiting room, the dining room his office. A hollow-core door clearly made of cardboard separated the patient from the ‘being patient’.

The doctor felt we should all be part of every consult. Lovely chap.

As the people ahead of me left the doctor’s office, we all checked to see if we could see their boils, rashes, and the like. It was a game.

My turn. Yippee.

Teenage acne is bad enough… not that I was delusional about the fact that anybody hadn’t noticed — a bit too full-on for that — but I was still a teenage girl. What I recall is something like this:

Doc (concert voice): What are you here for?

Me (whisper): Acne (really? Did I have to say?)

Doc: It’s just a bad case of teenage acne.

He poked my face.

Doc: Best thing for it is birth control.

Me: Pardon?

Doc (now louder because he thinks I can’t hear him): Birth control, birth control pills. You take them orally. Are you on them?

Me (I was 14): No.

Doc: Let me write you a prescription for birth control pills. The advantage is that it will clear up your acne and you will avoid unwanted pregnancies.

I took my piece of paper, walked through the waiting room of shame knowing all the ‘being patients’ would be checking out my teenage acne and sussing their chances with me now that I can’t get pregnant.

At least nobody at the stool lab wanted to sleep with me.