Shitting Blood

Well, not really. Typically, when I wipe, there’s bright red on the paper. Sometimes a few fine dots, sometimes a splotch the size of a pencil eraser that makes it clear that holy shit I’m bleeding from my asshole. I had a doctor check it out, he says it’s a tear in the anus. How the fuck did that happen. I don’t recall sanding my asshole with cheap one-ply five times a day.

I looked up how haemorrhoids happen. One cause is prolonged sitting. That is probably it. For months I’d sit on my ass playing World of Warcraft for hours every day. I never thought that would lead to me grinding shit directly into my bloodstream every time I take a dump. I’m fucking twenty-three. This shit isn’t supposed to happen yet (no pun intended).

Then again, a lot has happened in the last three years. In 2014 I was hospitalized as a suicide risk. In 2015 I was hospitalized for viral myocarditis. Woke up one Sunday morning feeling like a truck was parked on my chest, went to the hospital and was told by the doctor that it was probably heartburn from all the meds I’d been taking for the gastroenteritis I had that week. But, she said, we’ll do some blood tests just to be sure. Then she comes back and tells me I need to be put in the ICU because my heart muscle is dying. First time I had morphine. It didn’t do anything to stop the pain. Anyway, made a full recovery; it’s like it never happened.