The Shit Bucket Test, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Doody Bomb, Part I

I went to London in August 2001 and crapped out a shitbrick so big that I broke the toilet (which was mortifying and made worse by the fact that two Eastern European maids were sent to fix it.  As soon as they saw the turd, they laughed uncontrollaby in that no-I-can’t-believe-it-is-that-big-and-I-have-to-deal-with-it nervous kind of way.)   While that sucked for everyone involved, it was only the beginning of The [Digestive] Troubles.

When I began crapping orange grease and yellowish doody the next summer, I went to a GI.  A previous colonoscopy had shown everything to be more or less normal.  I was tested for parasites.  Negative.  I was tested for Crohn’s.  Negative.  It was time for the shit bucket test.

The shit bucket test is seriously the most repulsive medical test ever.  The plan is to get the subject to eat more fat than usual so that she can produce more doody than thought possible for someone under 5’2”.  The prodigal amounts of poo are then collected in a bucket over the course of three days.  Yes – you read that correctly - three days. Meaning: a bucket of shit sits somewhere in your home over three days while you add more.  Three very, very smelly days.  Sure, you can put the shit bucket in the refrigerator to make it smell slightly less foul, but then you have a bucket of shit in your refrigerator!  (It did not help that the first time I was a shit bucket user  - yes, I took this test more than once - I had a fridge that fit under my counter.  There was only room for the shit bucket.  Of course, maybe that is for the best…)  The doody is then delivered to a lab, which mixes the poop together at a high speed to “homogenize” the specimen. A sample is then taken out and the amount of undigested fat in the crap sample is measured.

For test run #1, I kindly waited until Husband was out of town.  (He’s squeamish about shit buckets and the like in the fridge.)  My windowless bathroom smelled like an exploded sewer by the end of the third day, what with all that shit emanating from me.  The bucket was a plastic jug with a screw on lid.  It looked a lot like those supersize mayonnaise containers that people buy at Sam’s Club although no one should ever eat that much mayo under any circumstances.  The gallon jug was about ¾ full at the end of my collection period.  I put it in a plastic bag that said “I ♥ NY,” and walked it over to the nearest Quest Diagnostics lab.  Guess what?  They no longer accepted that type of bucket.  I schlepped it onto the subway (I did wonder what would happen if someone snatched the bag from me – it still makes me laugh and laugh to think about the person face as he discovers what the loot is)  and dropped it off at another lab, only to later discover that they tossed it.