My early AM problem. (Possibly TMI)

I know this might be TMI, but here it goes. If you are sqeamish about bodily functions you may want to avoid reading this.

A few months ago I had a prostate exam. It sucks, but I was way past due for a full physical, and I thought I needed the exam. So did my doctor since I wake up every morning around 4 am and have to pee. Luckily there are no prostrate problems, but that drives me crazy, since I have to get up at 5 AM.

But you know whats worse? When I get up at 5, and start getting ready to go to PT formation I always, always, always have to take a dump. ALWAYS! Its not like I can do that a 4. I just don’t have to go right then, except to pee.

And I usually don’t have the urge until I’m freaking dressed! I’ll be ready to head out and all of a sudden the urge to defecate overcomes me. I’ve even waited until the last minute sitting on the can and nothing. I put my spandex and PT uniform on and BAM! Now I gotta go! Its made me very close to being late several times. This morning I slept a little late and had no time. All through the formation I thought I was going to crap myself.

I have got to figure out a way to make this stop. I can’t get up any earlier. I’m not a morning person so its hard enough to get myself going out of the door no later than 0545. I need some kind of reverse laxative.

Have you always been on this same schedule or is this also a recent change?
Are you drinking coffee when you wake up? Coffee is a laxative so it’s going to make things want to move. Frankly, I think I would prefer to have that out of the way before I leave in the morning than have the urge bit later. Sorry, I have no suggestions on how to plug ul the plumbing. Sometimes you body just has to gets its way.

PT? Which branch of the service has spandex in their uniforms?

You want to talk about strange?

I work at a school district that has multiple buildings. When I was first hired, I worked out of building A. When I started my job here I would (without fail) have the irresistible urge to take a dump immediately after I arrived at work. I was at this building for 2 years and it happened just like clockwork every day.

Then I got moved to building B, and it stopped. I mean it completely stopped. I no longer had the urge after I got into work in the AM to take a dump. I naturally forgot all about it.

I worked at building B for 3 years, then I got moved BACK to building A and wouldn’t you know it started AGAIN. Every morning I come into work get my workstation fired up and WHAM, I have to go take a dump. I’ve been back at building A for 5 years now and it has been going like this every day I come into work.

How weird is that?

Jolly, allow me to commiserate for I, too, experienced the urge during PT, usually halfway through a 3-mile run.

Go to bed earlier, start getting up at 4:00 and enjoy a couple cups of coffee while you work on your continuing education correspondence courses which you should be taking anyway. Lay your pipe around 5:30 and then out the door with you.

Dragwyr - It’s not as strange as you think. My previous roommate could not walk into a Home Depot with out needing to poop. We could go to Lowe’s with no problems, but she started walking funny as soon as we walked in to a Home Depot.

It happens to me at bookstores. I think maybe it’s all the reading - I’m a bathroom reader…

Yeah, I can totally see that with Home Depot. Actually worked for a division of HD and I felt more like puking…:stuck_out_tongue:

Its not part of the uniform, but I wear spandex shorts under my PT shorts. I have to or I get badly chafed in the…um…“area”.

Inigo Montoya: Correspondence courses won’t get me promoted, I’m a bit past that phase. Besides, with 20 years in and no great desire to more than my current enlistment (if I don’t just choose to retire before it expires), its not something I worry about.

I can’t get up at four. I’d be miserable. I go to bed around 930 PM or 10 on work nights. I don’t like getting up early, never have. I just need to NOT have to take a giant schlock first thing in the morning.

Deleros Reborn: I always have to fart in bookstores. I don’t know why.

Funny, I was going to ask Dragwyr if building A was a Home Depot. I, too, suffer from HCIDU - Home Center Induced Dump Urgency.

Lowe’s will cause symptoms for me to a lesser degree, but Home Depot? Every. Frakkin’. Time.

Used to happen to me in the new campus library at my college. I’d walk in and promptly have to go find a bathroom. I don’t know what the deal is with that sort of thing, but evidently some people are susceptible to some sort of environmental suggestion that triggers the need? I dunno, it’s weird. And, I suppose, it would be self-reinforcing; every time it happens, your body gets the message that it’s supposed to happen.

For me (and I’m pretty young, only 28)

I’m fine at work. Quitting time is 5:00 PM. I never, ever have to “go” at work.

Home is about 10 minutes away. Literally, the second I walk in my front door - bam. Body tells me - it’s deuce-time.

I have developed some strange environmental response. Get home? Time to drop a deuce. It’s very weird. I don’t feel a thing, literally, until I walk in the door. Then everything moves and it’s “I need to go, badly”.

I think the body does learn and pick up on environmental cues. Hell, it happens to dogs - why shouldn’t it happen to humans?

Sorry, no sympathy. I wake up at pretty much 3 am every morning, have all the life I can remember except when I worked nights. I also will get up at 5 am, pee, and then need to crap about 30 minutes later, and I refuse to hunker down on teh toilet the half an hour until I crap. I have had to train mrAru that he does not occupy the bathroom until after 6 am because when I have to finally go i HAVE TO GO NOW. grrrr … I dont even use an alarm clock, my body wakes me up at 5 whether I needed to or not, so I just take my morning meds at 530 every morning.

What sucks is when I have a multiday spell of insomnia where I just cant get back to sleep after 3:rolleyes:

Try wearing earplugs. Maybe someone has mastered the brown note.:wink:

I used to have the HCIDU too. Mine was also specific to Home Depot. It lasted about a year after I started working there (I made sure to show up early every work day so I could get the dump out of the way), then it finally went away.

Well, it sounds like you need to take you AM BM PDQ before you’re SOL.

Ever since I was a kid, brushing my teeth creates a sudden, urgent need for me to pee. The urge passes as soon as I am done brushing my teeth. The only way to prevent this is to pee immediately before brushing. :eek:

And I always try to poop in the morning before I leave for work; I hate pooping in public bathrooms. Sometimes I can’t go, but then have to go as soon as I get to work. I HATE that! :mad:

I always wake up about an hour before I need to be at work. Immediately, I pee and poop upon getting out of bed. I’ll check my e-mail, perhaps read a little Straight Dope, get dress, and about a half hour after my first dump of the day, I have to dump again. It doesn’t happen on my days off, unless I’ve got the beershits from the night before, but that’s a totally different story. I’m extremely regular. I poop probably 3 to 4 times a day, including the first two as separate dumps. If I get constipated, something’s really wrong.

I’m going to shit my pants if I read any more of this topic! :stuck_out_tongue: :smiley: :wink: :slight_smile:

I feel for the OP. It happened to me a couple years back, but luckily not while I was still in the military. I hated getting up early in the military, but I’m naturally up between four & five AM and that’s just the start of my day now. I get lots of quiet time to myself in the morning though, and that’s a bonus.

The other thing that sucks and started with me in my mid-twenties was a reversal of the “shit, shower, shave” mantra. Oh, no. For me it’s shower then shit. Every damn time. Five minutes after I get out of that warm steamy shower, I gotta go. If I don’t take a shower, no prob. In the evening if I want to go out and be freshly showered I pretty much have to take a shower, get dressed, wait a minute, dump, get undressed and back in the shower and hope it doesn’t do it to me a second time.