Clean Thyself

In the hopes that this may help someone else who ends up with similar problems, I offer this description of how I have to clean myself now. Warning: the following includes descriptions of poop and cleaning sensitive areas.

Awhile ago, I ended up with MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) which could end up with flesh eating bacteria, and death.

It wasn’t pretty. Hives, boils, pustules, and areas of skin peeling off. After trying several antibiotics, the doctor gave me his home phone number and said if it got the slightest bit worse, to call him and get myself to an emergency room.

It got fixed after a month or so of several courses of different antibiotics. That, of course, also killed off most of my gut bacteria, and produced a month or so of diarrhea.

Nobody warned me that trying to use toilet paper to clean diarrhea every day for a month would produce scar tissue around the anus, but here we are.

Or, that killing off most of your gut bacteria would change your normal poop consistency, to that of very sticky peanut butter.

The combination of scar tissue, and sticky peanut butter means that toilet paper no longer works to clean myself. I had to escalate to more extensive cleaning protocols.

Cleaning wipes include soaps that are irritating, and the fibers on the wipes are also rough on the area, and so were soon discounted as a possibility. Water works. Lots of water. But that isn’t easily available in most public bathrooms unless I use the water in the toilet bowl.  EWWWW.  I had a discussion with a taxi driver in Washington, DC once about this. He said that Sikhs are supposed to wash themselves, and not use toilet paper, and their standard is that the water in the toilet bowl is clean enough, if you flush it 3 times first. I’m not so sure, but OK.

So now, I carry a standard disposable bottle of drinking water around most of the time. Nobody notices. I take the label off, to remind me it isn’t really drinking water (except in an emergency) (It never really gets close to or used directly, so the water should be clean enough to drink, but still), and take a wad of toilet paper and pour water on it, to use the water-soaked paper to initially clean the area. That gets most, but not all, off.

Then, to work to dissolve the last of the poop, I use water-based personal lubricant, which I apply with my finger, and work it around, to absorb the gooey stuff. Yes, my finger gets coated with lube and gooey stuff. Yes, I wash really well afterwards.

Then, I use regular dry toilet paper to carry away most of the goop, and then another application of water-soaked toilet paper. And hopefully, finally, another application of dry toilet paper.

Often, I have to repeat the lube, water-soaked, dry, lube, etc. process until the area is clean and dry.

One problem with the lube step, is that personal lubrication typically comes in large tubes or tubs, which are ungainly to carry around in my pants pocket. I have resorted to repackaging it into empty 1 oz. Gold Bond skin Healing moisturizer tubes. These are small, easily obtained, do not contaminate the lube with anything corrosive (in fact, some of the moisturizer contamination probably helps) publicly acceptable, and discreet.

After the Gold Bond tube is empty, I have a large syringe (much like a meat tenderizer syringe) I fill with personal lube, and squirt it into the Gold Bond tube to fill it. Nobody notices, nobody comments, and I can carry around my cleaning apparatus without notice.

Just thought I’d put this out there, in case it would help anybody in similar circumstances.