One of my favorite websites is mercola.com, a how-to-stay healthy website run by Joseph Mercola, an enlightened doctor whose theory for staying well is to avoid the staples of our health care system: drugs, surgery, and insurance companies who practice medicine. Instead he advocates a more natural, holistic approach to medicine.
Dr. Mercola publishes a newsletter every few days with terrific articles on everything to improving your memory to the benefits of sunshine and the evils of statins. Last week the newsletter contained an article on hemorrhoids.
I stated in a previous blog that I might get back to my story about them. I’m not big on over-sharing, but maybe my encounter with these dastardly creatures might be helpful for someone else.
As previously mentioned, I developed hemorrhoids in college at my sorority house. They were a direct result of overcrowding—eight coeds in one bedroom called the Pledge Porch. The luxurious accommodations also included one shower and one bathroom stall. I felt compelled (for privacy and etiquette reasons) to get in and out as quickly as possible. The time pressure made me nervous. As a result, I tried too hard. I strained. I forced. Long story short: hemorrhoids.
According to Dr. Mercola, hemorrhoids are veins in the rectum that become twisted and inflamed. Lovely. They also bleed when anything passes by them. Ick!
Despite their small size, they are big in producing pain. For me, walking from Fraternity Row to attend class was excruciating.
I needed a remedy and I needed it fast. There was no way I was going to the health center on campus, which may have involved some sort of inspection. There was no internet to search for help. There was only Preparation H. I bought a sack full.
I applied it faithfully but my ’roids seemed immune to it. And it did not ease the pain when walking, sitting, or sleeping. What I needed was some kind of barrier between the inflamed veins and my butt cheeks.
Whoever said necessity is the mother of invention was correct. I found my own solution. Along with the Preparation H, I gobbed on a big heap of Vaseline petroleum jelly—like piling on a pile on my piles! The Vaseline provided enough lubrication so I could move my legs and not cause friction to the delicate area with boo-boos.
There was one problem with this remedy. Body heat. It melted the heap into a pool of liquid grease, which soaked through my underwear and left a huge oily stain on my clothes in the buttocks region.
How did I discover this? Someone told me. A guy of course. As I hurried to a class. Who knows how long I waltzed around campus looking like I needed a diaper. Even worse, Preparation H is made from shark oil, which has a pungent fish aroma. So not only did I look like I needed a diaper, I smelled like it too.
I ditched the Prep H but had to use the Vaseline if I wanted to not flunk out of school. I wrapped a sweater around my waist to hide the grease stain but I was ruining all my clothes. I had to find a cure for the hemorroids. But as long as I was stuck using the Pledge Porch bathroom, it wasn’t going to happen.
The answer was to find a new and private restroom.
The USC campus is huge. There had to be one with low traffic patterns. I scouted several buildings. Too many users. I was getting discouraged—until Eurkea! I found the perfect unpopulated ladies’ restroom. It was located waaay down at the bottom of Doheny Library. I was literally going to the bowels of the building to move my bowels.
Doheny Library is a magnificent building. I think it’s the grandest one on campus.
Built in 1931 in a Romanesque design, it has a gorgeous bronze entryway with the university seal in mosaic above it. The main rotunda is adorned with Porto Santo marble floors, stained glass, a stone sarcophagus, and a spectacular crystal chandelier.
I located a restroom down three flights of Travertine marble stairs, then down a semi-dark hall. It had a carved wooden door, forest green marble sinks and stalls, and beautiful light fixtures. It was immaculately clean. It was quiet and totally uninhabited.
I found peace there.
Eventually my medical problem went away. But I continued to use this one particular restroom for the next three and a half years. It was my private domain—a place to relax and let nature run its course.
During the three and a half years I used that restroom, I never once saw another person on that floor.
I did end up with an interesting development from this experience. To this day I cannot go to a library—any library in any town—and not feel the urge to go. I think it has to do with the smell of books triggering something in my brain.
Most of the time I can talk myself out of the urge. But sometimes I can’t and I have to leave and go home, as these other libraries’ facilities are not “my Doheny Library restroom.”
Moral of the story: Don’t get hemorrhoids. But if you do, find a deserted library.
