So this is one of the worst things that has happened and TECHNICALLY happened before I was diagnosed but it is definitely IBD related. We have a toilet downstairs in our house and a couple of months ago it got blocked. As we are slightly lazy people, we didn’t get anyone to look at it, partly because of lockdown and partly because neither of us wanted to contact the rental people.
Eventually both of us got sick of having to run upstairs if we wanted the toilet and we finally contacted the rental people. They sent the man out for the washing machine and the dishwasher (that were also broken) and a man out to fix the toilet.
It was quite clear that the toilet was blocked, and very blocked at that.
When I had first become ill, I was going to the toilet so many times that I started needing to use toilet wipes instead of paper as I was very sore. Due to lockdown and everything else, I had mainly used baby wipes (they were easier to get hold of when people raided the shops for toilet paper). Baby wipes, it turns out, do not degrade and are not meant to go down the toilet.
The man was not able to unblock the toilet in the normal ways, nothing was working and after about 2 hours at our house (having the drain covers off and everything) he decided that he was going to need to take the toilet off the wall.
IT WAS SO EMBARRASSING.
So toilet off the wall and the use of some really long stick things (don’t even ask me what they are called) and the toilet was FINALLY unblocked. There was a HUGE amount of wipes down the toilet and I was incredibly embarrassed. He hooked the wipes out of the drain and then gave me a lecture. He put the toilet back on the wall and we were finally free!
NO MORE WIPES.
To make it even more embarrassing, the next day I received a text from the plumber, giving me a list of toilet wipes that could be put down the toilet.
Now, looking back on it, it’s quite funny. At the time I couldn’t have given less of a shit (excuse the pun) about what I was putting down the toilet but lesson learnt.