The Latest Poop

Warning: Adult content (with a smidgen of prepubescent-male humor)

One of my favorite writers is Davy Barry.  For years, he wrote a weekly humor column in the Miami Herald.  Then he sold his life story to TV, made a boatload of money, and retired.  As readers of this forum well know, I cannot come up with a new story every week.  Sometimes, not even every month.  So, I am in awe of the sheer volume of Dave’s columns.  Dave had an advantage, though.  His millions of “alert readers” would constantly send him newspaper clippings about strange things to inspire him.  My readers are just as alert, but they just aren’t as numerous.  So, most times I must depend upon my own imagination, but not always.

Sometimes, I catch a newspaper article or news story that triggers an idea.  I then Google the facts, just like any other professional investigative journalist.  Then I proceed to make s##t up.

But I’m not making this s##t up.  This is real.  Every year between 15 and 30 thousand people actually die from a condition called recurrent Clostridium Difficile Colitis.  Usually, this results from a long hospital stay during which they have been pumped up on antibiotics to kill some kind of really bad bacteria in their system.  Unfortunately, the antibiotics also kill all the good bacteria.  “Good bacteria?” I hear you say, and I say, “Yes.  There is such a thing as good bacteria.  It’s mostly in our stomach and intestines, and we actually need it to live.  If you don’t believe me, Google it.”

So, what happens when you run out of good bacteria?  Duh!  You get a bacteria transplant. This is where it gets strange.  Where do you find good bacteria?  The answer is, in poop, or more specifically in healthy poop.  So, now, when someone tells you that they’ve got some really good s##t, be aware that it might have absolutely nothing to do with drugs.

There is even a clinic in Boston looking for poop donors.  You get $40 a pop, or, more correctly, $40 a poop.  Of course, there are conditions, and the first one is that you have to donate healthy poop, which isn’t exactly the same as just taking a big healthy s##t.  They check it, by running medical tests on it over the course of 60 days.  If, after 60 days, your poop is up to par, they pay you for all your donations, and okay you for another 60 days of donations.

The clinic has a second condition.  You must be from the Boston area.  As an old Yankee fan, I can understand this.  With the exception of my friends Bill and Mary Ford, everyone I know in Boston is full of s##t.  So, they probably produce the largest volume of poop per donation.  (Apologies in advance to my thousands of Boston readers.)

Then comes the fun part.  The clinic makes up a mixture of poop and saline solution.  (The exact proportion of ingredients is a well-guarded secret, like the recipe for Coca-Cola, Kentucky-Fried Chicken, or MacDonald’s special sauce.)  Then, they perform an FMT, a Fecal Microbial Transplantation, via Colonoscopy.  One treatment is all you need, and you’re cured.  So, patients can literally bend over and, a short time later, crack a smile.

For some, though, who have side effects from the anesthesia used during a colonoscopy, there is another solution – Poop Pills.  No s##t.  I mean, yes, they do contain s##t, but I’m not s##tting you about there being such a thing as poop pills.  You have to swallow about 20 of them for it to work, but studies have shown that this method is just as effective as the Colonoscopy method, with way fewer side effects (If you don’t count throwing up in the waiting room).  It’s also cheaper, as it costs just $300 versus $500 for the Hershey Highway delivery system.

Now, the interesting part.  Not so surprisingly, somebody came up with the brainy idea of separating the good bacteria from the donated poop, so that poop-free (as well as, I suppose, sugar-free, peanut-free, and gluten-free) versions of the “medicine” could be offered.  To everyone’s surprise, it didn’t work.  The bacteria transplantation alone wasn’t enough to generate good bacteria in the host.  Even more surprisingly, maybe even way more surprisingly, the now bacteria-free poop by itself still worked.  So, there is another mystery ingredient in poop that works either as a catalyst or something else to facilitate the bacterial transfer and growth of good bacteria in the host.  Scientists in Boston are probably working night and day trying to find out what this ingredient is.  Presumably there are people in New England laboratories s##ting their brains out to provide enough raw material for scientific scrutiny.  When these scientists isolate the mystery ingredient, they’ll probably try to figure out a way to make it synthetically.

So, Red Sox fans, before this golden-brown opportunity ends, stop flushing your money down the toilet, and head for a dump-donor site near you.  Get your ass to work, and you could be making money and saving lives.

 

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl