I was born with a rare bowel disease called Hirshsprung’s Disease. Despite it’s hard to spell name, the concept is pretty simple:
I couldn’t poo.
To spare you the scientific jargon, my large intestine didn’t work properly, meaning my body was unable to “relieve itself” the way most people’s body does. I was the 1 in 5000 newborns to have this condition and it gave my parents a fright, to say the least!
I was rushed to a specialist children’s hospital where I had more tests from inside a state-of-the-art incubator. I cried in pain every time my parents held me and had to be fed through tubes. At just 2 weeks old, I had my first surgery to try and fix my faulty digestive system.
What a welcome to the world, right?
The first surgery removed 80% of my large intestine, leaving me with a poop-bag attached to my body (or a colostomy bag, if you want to be technical) for the next few months. At 3 months old, I had my second surgery to reverse my colostomy surgery and restore “normal” intestinal function – just with much less intestine that I originally had.
Since this traumatic entrance to the world, Hirschsprung’s hasn’t posed any risk to me, but it’s far from a distant memory. Every time I look in the mirror whilst getting changed, I see the reminders of my ordeal with HD. Two scars, and irregular bathroom habits, are all that reminds me of what I went through.
But it wasn’t always like this.
During my school years, I was laughed at, tormented, and outright bullied for having these scars on my stomach, I was called ‘disgusting’ and “weird” because I needed to poo so often – which is just one of the perks of having just 20% of your colon left I suppose! I quickly learnt, to my detriment, how to “hold it in”. I believed that needing to go to the bathroom was a bad thing and that my scars were something to be embarrassed about, especially as a female.
I was wrong on three accounts.
For years, I was afraid that my scars were ugly or would open a conversation I didn’t want to have. Someone even suggested I should pretend I’d had my appendix taken out because of where my scars are? (The audacity) I didn’t wear crop tops for fear of being shamed, and I always felt awkward going swimming.
Throughout my teenage years especially, I struggled with the anxiety around going to the bathroom.
What if people heard me?
What if I took too long?
What if….?
There were times I would hold it in until I was doubled over in pain, or I vomited. This wasn’t healthy, and I knew it. I’d literally had surgery to allow me to achieve this basic function and now I was forcing myself not to? Something had to change.
I’d started doing working on myself and I became increasingly proud of my Hirschsprung’s Disease.
I realised that other people’s lack of understanding doesn’t take away from what I faced as a baby.
The prouder I became, the more confident I became to go to the toilet in public. I started realising that I don’t record how long other people spend in the bathroom so why on Earth would they time me?
If they do, they are the odd ones - not the girl in the bathroom doing the one thing everyone else does.
Societal judgement had deprived me of the confidence to perform one of the most natural functions, and I wasn’t prepared to give away that power anymore.
Somehow, we’ve created a society where needing a poo is often seen as ‘rude’ or ‘dirty’, even more so in females.
So now, I advocate for all women who feel they need to hold it in, and for those who have been shamed for their bathroom habits relating to conditions like IBS, IBD, and menopause. I speak up for all the ladies who just want to poo in peace and have been subject to the same torment I once faced.
We have come so far in tackling the stigma around periods and that “time of the month”, but our other bathroom habits have lagged.
So, come on ladies – now is the time to stand up.
We shouldn’t be ashamed of our bodily functions, and we shouldn’t feel like we should have to hold it in.
Together, we can have a world where no women or girl is made to feel disgusting by her body.
A world where no daughter is afraid to go to the toilet in school.
A world where no sister is embarrassed to talk about her bowel condition.
A world where no girlfriend is afraid to poo in a 10mile radius of her partner.
But it only works if we do it together.
