EPTAt first I thought it would be completely repulsive, but producing a stool sample turned out to be a super fun process. The first female lab technician handed me a plastic bag with color-coded vials and a sixteenth-folded instruction sheet, saying "the other girl explained to you what to do right?"
I said "No, but I assume you just poop into the thing right?" to which she responded, "No no no! You need to follow the instructions inside. You'll need something to poop into!" And she handed me a huge white basin to fit over my toilet seat.
"Oh great! So do I just go into the bathroom and do my business? I've been holding it for a while."
"Ummm... You can do it at home and bring it back."
"Oh, but I have no problems doing it here."
She looked down at the shit baggie and white shit basin she'd handed me moments earlier.
"Ummm... You can do it at home and bring it back."
So I drove home and ran into the toilet, excited to tackle this new challenge head on. I dropped my pants, sat on the toilet and started to push.
But right as the first log was about to come out, I sucked it back in with all my strength upon the realization that I had not yet read the instructions! I attribute my success in life so far to my robotic following of instructions. Thus, I felt no reason not to continue the trend!
So as the tip of a shitlog dangled precariously from my bum I carefully leaned over and grabbed the plastic shitbag from off the floor and pulled out the instruction sheet. In every language from English to Laotian to French to Chinese, this paper explained in exuberant details the proper shit-collecting procedure!
I read it with much excitement and skipped straight to number 4 which told me to pass my stool directly into the white basin without letting any urine contaminate the sample. Given:
1.) The size of the basin,
2.) The size of the toilet seat, and
3.) The enormity of my testicles
This was a highly nontrivial task. But not one to fold in the face of poo-related adversity, I figured out a perfect solution.
Still mid-log, I squatted up and placed the white basin on the toilet seat, lifting the front slightly so I could slip my balls under before dropping the basin back down. I found the exquisite precision necessary for this task exhilirating as the entire ball-shit-basin-seat contraption fit together nicely.
I proceeded to relieve myself, but in my haste I accidentally let out a second log! Nowhere in the instructions did it say what to do in such an unexpected situation. Thinking on my feet, now that I'd wiped my anus and removed myself unscathed from the complicated balltrap, I grabbed the white cup of a double-rocky-road sundae and placed it in the bathtub, where I might better perform the subsequent procedures.
After looking through steps 5-8, it didn't seem like the heterogeneity of the two stools would cause any statistical aberrances, so I proceeded to remove the color-coded vials from the plastic shitbag. I unscrewed the container to the first vial and to my great surprise, the smell of the liquid preservative inside was slightly more malodorous than that which it was created to preserve. Oh, and the cap had one of those spoons on it remniscent of the kind that come in those single-serving Haagen Dazs cartons. I took this spoon and scooped up modest servings from the center and ends of my poopmound, scraping the brown sauce on the sides of the vial and rinsing the spoon in the preservative fluid beneath.
I screwed the first vial shut and repeated the process with the remaining two vials. After I returned the last vial to the plastic shitbag, I realized I'd made a terrible mistake: I had forgotten to document the consistency of my stool! D=
Still confident in my ability to produce a proper stool sample, I removed the vials from the bag once more and uncapped my pen. But then, the terrible mistake I'd made earlier dawned on me. While the first stool was dark brown, firm and even somewhat sticky, the second one was a much creamier yellow. Should I mark "formed" or "soft?"
I stared at the diagrams for those two options, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth...
The answer was obvious. I marked both.
Now with an almost orgasmic sense of anticipation, I returned all 3 vials to the shitbag and with a triumphant air, zipped the bag. I reveled in the glory of my victory and used the opportunity to dance/shake up my stool samples to ensure maximum dissolution.
In the afterglow of the most exciting experience of my life, I could only continue to dance... until I realized that two logs were not nearly sufficient to empty my bowels.
I immediately dropped my pants and fell back onto my toilet... smiling.
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