Posts
Call the Plumber..
By
Vivek Hande
Blessed are the folks who clear their bowels clean and
satisfactorily in one go and are happy and light the rest of the day...
This is not a
frivolous statement . Constipation is serious matter and affects large numbers
of people and can spoil your day and make your existence miserable. Especially
in a gut-centric society like ours , it
is very important to get this matter sorted
to its logical conclusion! I have
many patients who have varying degrees of this problem and life does seem to revolve around this issue
for better or worse...
I am an honorary member of this club and I have many
patients who try their own brand of remedies and pass it on for the benefit of
others . There is a grizzly old veteran
who has tried everything under the sun and moon . He told me once that the
amount spent on his laxatives over the years was probably more than the GDP of
Finland and Hungary put together. Another retired senior Government Official told me that he is redecorating his toilet. He
told me that since I was not really helping his cause and he continued to spend
about four hours in the toilet each day he was planning some changes . He said
he had installed a 1.5 Ton Air –
Conditioner and a 42 inch LCD Television in the loo. He was seriously
considering arranging a Mini- Bar too...
Another lady told me
that with the amount she had invested in
Prunes and Flax and Sesame seeds and Lemon
juice with coriander; warm water with honey ;
cold tea with molasses and a million other remedies , she could have
bought a flat in Cuffe Parade,Mumbai! Another gentleman told me that none of my
prescribed medicines helped him much – he said all the Lactulose and Dulcolax
and Liquid Paraffin in the world had not helped him. He told me that on my insistence he had stepped up his fiber and fruit intake each day and half his pension
was being spent on the enhanced fiber intake but to no avail. He also told me
that he was almost feeling like a fruit orchard himself.He did tell me that he
had finally found his own cost effective remedy and that was helping him
enormously. He was a changed man and looked extremely chirpy the last time he
visited me. I believe his secret recipe which he strongly urged me to pass on
to others was to listen to 'The Rolling Stones' at full blast at 5AM. He insisted it produced dramatic and explosive results within half hour!
It can affect ones’
day and behaviour and outlook and many behave in a very unpredictable manner if
one is not happy with the “output”. I had a colleague who would not attend
classes in the morning because he was suffering from a sense of ‘incomplete
evacuation’ till mid morning. I had another colleague whose behaviour was the
gauge to his bowel movements. The days he had done well in the loo would
translate into cheerful banter and coffee and Samosas for his staff. On the not so productive mornings , he would
be grumpy and crabby and make everyone
around him miserable too.
There was yet another unhappy gent who asked me if it was
all about tubes and the intestines being like coiled up pipes ,why is it that
we could not take some tips from the plumber and set the plumbing right. Sadly
, there are somethings which help and some which don’t; some who do well and
some who do not inspite of all concerted efforts.
Then of course , there is another entity which has nothing
to do with the gut. And as John Ottesen is said to have famously
remarked,” Some people are just mentally constipated and could use a brain
enema” And that is an infinitely more difficult
entity to treat and is almost beyond any form of known therapy!!
