My Kit Kat led to a series of events that will keep me forever committed to the keto diet (the two may or may not have a causal relationship, but regardless, like Pavlov's dog the experience is firmly imprinted in my mind).
I went off the keto diet with a planned cheat with my beautiful wife at a local Italian restaurant we had wanted to try. We ate to our delight; the next day had a family barbecue and devoured every carb in sight. I even enjoyed a Kit Kat. But an odd thing happened. Despite these carb-rich eating and drinking binges, for several days I did not poop.
Then comes the next day. I wake up that morning unsettled by it. I spend an hour pushing on the boulder, putting all my weight into it like I'm trying to nudge it down a hill. Nothing. I head to work and -- sweating, exhausted -- try the same exercise several times more. To no avail. Unfortunately I then I have to board a flight to Minneapolis. The urge becomes brutal at the poorly air-conditioned airport, and there I sit sweating profusely in the midst of a heat wave in junior varsity air conditioning in a state for which I only have one point of comparison, which is the three times I watched in horror as my wife pushed small people out of her uterus. No progress.
The three hour flight that followed was brutal, as was every minute in the cab to the hotel; all the while this monstrosity crowning from my rear as I pushed back against the pain with all my force. It was like whack-a-mole with one of the targets just peeking out from the depths.
I arrived at the hotel roadworn and aching and thought "well, surely now." And as I sat there in pain, writhing, trying to push the Rock of Gibraltar from my sphincter, I spent time Googling my problem (in Incognito mode) to try and distract myself. The horrors I read therein did nothing to assuage my concern. I was able to break off what I would estimate was the peak of the mountain, but it wasn't anything in comparison to what lied beneath (or, as it was, above)
I proceeded to map my way from the hotel to a local pharmacy. 0.6 miles. Normally a cake walk, but on this particular day, this my Via Dolorosa, made worse by -- and don't ask me why I did this -- the fact that I didn't put my socks back on before putting on my dress shoes. I was in a bit of a state of panic, and it just didn't occur to me this would present any issue.
I struggled to make it there, but all the pain overwhelmed any embarrassment I would otherwise have experienced in bringing the extra large Fleet Enema box to the front counter.
As I exited the Walgreen's, the urgency grew, I was in great discomfort, now compounded by the skin that my shoes were scraping from the backs of my bloodied ankles. In desperation, I hailed for an Uber. After a dance trying to locate him, he sped me the several blocks back to my hotel. I limped up to my room, and went inside. I laid myself on the cold hard bathroom floor, and administered. The pain remained great, but the feeling of relief was incredible. The industrial strength flush mechanism struggled with the first and most solid load (which I could not see below the murky surface, but I imagine it to be a black softball), but made quicker work of subsequent drops.
I went to bed that night with a chapped, bloodied, stinging rear. I feared the damage could be irreversible. I'll never fully understand what it's like to be a woman, but I always in part thought of my ####### as my own private treasure, my jewel knot, to share or not share with the world as I chose. I felt violated and battered. I barely slept, awoke with discomfort every two hours on the nose. I rose in the morning wondering if I'd be able to comfortably occupy a chair for my day's work.
Now over a day later, somehow, that magic muscle has seemingly healed itself. The backs of my ankles now hurt more than anything else. And I hope to sleep peacefully tonight and awake to normal bowel action in the morning.
My lesson? No more Kit Kats.