DIGESTIVE SYSTEM.
I’m forced, at times, to wonder why
I carry on or even try
to sort my digestive tract out
with all the crap that it spouts out.
The crap that I’m referring to
is not the faeces passing through
but all the hassle that I get,
which makes it less of an asset.
In this rhyme I’ll briefly state
some of the things I’ve come to hate
about those ways it lets me down
and for those things it is renown.
It all began when, as a child
my guts and piles would drive me wild
and so I tried to fix them and
the surgeon botched with knife in hand.
So, what this sad surgery meant
was, I became incontinent,
which seemed to last for years and years
and often brought me close to tears.
Then, my anal passage prolapsed
as my colon had collapsed,
which meant I could no longer s*it
and I became fed up with it.
Eventually, I’d had enough
of all that shitty anal stuff
and opted for a stoma so
I hoped these troubles would all go.
But NO! An anal stump was left behind
which meant that mucus I would find
would be another hassle which
made my resentment start to twitch.
DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. (continued)
This mucus needed to be caught
so. inco-pads were what I bought,
but that’s not what I deemed a cure
for they were simply one thing more.
So, I think that it’s pertinent
that I am still incontinent,
for this was something unexpected
with my colon disconnected.
Our stomas need attention and
they can get the upper-hand
even when we care a lot
they’ll still eject their filthy grot.
Either that, or they get blocked,
which makes the whole system get rocked,
achieving notoriety,
increasing our anxiety.
With stomas, we must remain strong
for many other things go wrong,
with snags and bags, and peaks of leaks
and the shame when stoma speaks.
Sometimes the smell’s unbearable
and clothes become unwearable,
and with all this embarrassment
comes untold angst and harassment.
Then. farther up this winding tract
a hiatus hernia in fact
created a reflux effect,
with yet another crap prospect.
It smote oesophagus and throat,
damaging that slippery coat
that helps the food to slide right through
and so it threw this pipe askew.
DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. (continued)
So, now my swallowing’s not good
and often, little bits of food,
which, in a ball they call bolus,
will stick in the oesophagus.
Although this can exasperate
at least I can regurgitate
by massaging my throat ‘til it
gets back in mouth with all that spit.
And yet, despite the threat of pain
sometimes, I’ll try, and try again
until the food gets past that point
and pain will tell me where to point.
For peristalsis rarely works,
as it seems my pipework shirks
its function as a working part
right from my mouth to where I fart.
Although these parts are all conjunct
this system has become defunct
and nothing seems to work for me
from mouth down to my ostomy.
It seems the pipework’s turned to slush,
although my nurse just calls it ‘mush’,
and there is not much they can do
to help the food-stuff to pass through.
My irrigation everyday
helps to flush the stuff away
and, for now, it works quite well,
or that’s as far as I can tell.
But who knows what might lie ahead
and what might lie in store instead?
I only hope it won’t get worse,
though, if it does, I’ll write more verse.
B. Withers 2023
