When the doctor first told me I was going to have to do it, I thought "no problem, I've cleaned grease traps. That has got to be worse.""
Boy was I wrong.
Oh, I stopped off at the drugstore before I had to do it, and bought some gloves. I got a tiny jar of Vaporub to dab under my nose, and a mask or three to wear while I did it. I had this under control.
Until I didn't. Until that first "squish" did me in. The warmth didn't help matters much, and somehow the smell I could still smell, even though there was no way I could possibly have smelled it through the mask and past the vaporub. "Imagination is key" many say. "You can imagine anything into existence" I'd been told. I was skeptical about that, until I could smell that stuff I was squishing between my fingers even though there was no way I could smell it.
I squished my way through piles of fecal material for nearly two weeks, tiny bit by tiny bit. I squeezed it between my thumbs and forefingers so I wouldn't miss it if it did come out. It would take a good five minutes to do a thorough job, multiplied by 12 times a day, and I figure I spent a good hour of every single day trying not to vomit.
Off to the doctor we went for a second time, this time to get an xray. That penny my baby had swallowed had to be somewhere in there, because it sure didn't come out in her poop.
"It's in the appendix" the doctor said.
This is my entry to 's daily freewrite challenge. Today's prompt is it's in the appendix.
I've been lax about using a timer of late, but I set the e.ggtimer for five minutes for this one, went a few seconds over to bring my story to a close, then proofread without changing any content for a couple minutes longer.
Thanks for reading my little story.