Top 10 Activities to do on the Toilet.

10.  Read a book
I can’t tell you how many books I have read on the toilet.  No, really.  I can’t tell you.  I honestly don’t remember.  I chalk that up to suppressing memories.

9.  Text or talk on your phone

Now, this one I remember doing.  I was texting or talking on the phone probably the majority of my visits.  The text usually involved…  “I’m pooping. J”  Sometimes, if they were lucky, I would even send a picture.  Don’t worry folks.  I only sent pictures of my best poops.  I’m talking the 6 inch solid stool.  This “log” was a rarity.  When 99.9% of my stools were coming out…well, I don’t want to ruin the food you’re eating right now.  Oh, too late?  Sorry!      

8.  Play Sudoku or any other games

I’m not really a game person, but when you are were making as many long visits as I was, you’ll stoop to anything to entertain yourself.  The only time I found myself playing Sudoku was at my in-laws house.  They always had games and books lying around the toilet.  There are too many numbers involved in Sudoku, so if there was a book or magazine, I usually chose that.  My favorite book of theirs was called “Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.”  Books made for reading while pooping…Genius!

7.  Pray for your life

I spent a lot of time praying on the toilet.  Most of the time, my prayers were for healing and strength to get me through the next agonizing moments of my life.  There were even times when I prayed for death.  Clearly, missing the middle of a story, a date night, or a joke on the toilet was not what I would call living.  Life was filled with more pain than peace.  There were times when I just wanted it all to end, Lord willing of course.  Apparently, God answered my prayers in a different way.     

6.  Think about your life

Plenty of moments were spent thinking about what was the purpose of my life?  Why me?  Why am I going through this?  What is the point of having a disease that makes me shit uncontrollably?  Is this real life?  Seriously, I really have a disease that makes me shit uncontrollably!  My life was like a cruel joke.  All that time, spent shitting uncontrollably, gave the time to come up with my theory on why this was happening to me.

It’s the Devil!  Pretty much it is his entire fault.  Yes, God did allow the Devil to slowly kill me from the inside out, but he was using my disease for good. 

5.  Study

Who am I kidding?  I didn’t study on the toilet.  If I tried to study on the toilet, not only would that add to my misery, but I’d probably have toilet seat butt from falling asleep sitting down.  It would not surprise me if someone in a similar position as me would study while dropping a bomb.  When you spend as much time on the toilet as we IBDers do, you find ways to make that time productive.  Sometimes that means being creative.  Hence, we have the chapter of the Top Ten Things to do on the Toilet.

4. Watch a movie

Now, I don’t really remember watching a movie on the toilet.  I do remember sitting my laptop outside of my bathroom door and watching Lost on DVD.  I was blessed enough to have my own bathroom being a Resident Assistant (RA) in a dorm with suites.  Huge BLESSING!  Trust me.  No one wanted to use the same toilet as me when I was done with it.  Anyway, back to the movie thing. Two and half seasons of Lost were watched in one summer RA session.  I couldn’t get into the third season so I moved on to other ways of occupying my poopy time.

3.  Singing

I find myself singing on the toilet all the time…in the comfort of my home bathroom anyway.  When I’m in a public restroom, I generally sing in my head.  I actually have a theme song.  “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” by the Gap Band, is generally the song the pops into my head.  Other favorites include, “You are my Sunshine, anything from the hymnal, and “Call Me Maybe.”  I just can’t get it out of my head.

I thought I'd include the music video for your viewing pleasure.  Enjoy!

2.  Facebook

You don’t have to have a chronic disease that makes you poop uncontrollably to Facebook while you ‘drop a bomb’.  I’m pretty sure this is a cultural norm these days.  I just hope that people are not touching their technical devices once they have started the wiping process and have washed their hands.  Gross!  As long as you don’t touch anything and are just sitting, then my OCD and I are on good terms.

1.  Play Catchphrase with your friends on the other side of the door.

This is by far the best thing to do on the toilet…especially if you have awesome friends like I do.  In preparation for my Ileostomy surgery, my dear friends Amber, Leanne, and of course Jeremy kept me company while the gallon of Miralax was working its magic.  We had played a few games while I was drinking the mixture of lime Gatorade and Miralax.  When the magic started happening, I sat on the toilet while they gave clues to the Catchphrase word.  This is my favorite game!  If I was going down in this bomb fight, at least I was going down playing a game I love. 

In all of this murky water, I was so thankful to have people supporting me!