C’mon. Confess… confess.
It was about as pleasant as the description sounds. They give you a little bucket to put over your toilet seat to catch the feces, with the admonishment to urinate prior to putting the bucket in place (if possible, you don’t want to catch urine as well). You hold your nose, take a little spoon, and drop samples into the (multiple, depending on the test- I had 5) sample jars. Put the jars in the biohazard bags, and follow your doc’s directions on where to drop them off.
Depending on your issue, the consistency of the feces can make dumping the non-sample remainder into the toilet and disposing of the bucket a… gross process. I just did it as quickly as possible.
For mine, I just has to spread a trace of material on a spot on a card, and refold the card and return it. In a plastic biohazard bag with pictures of skull and crossbones on it.
This is the best thread I’ve seen all day! lol
I was having stomach issues of unknown origin and had to submit a stool sample. They gave me a very small specimen jar that … uh… would be difficult to fill directly?
So let me tell you, there is not much more humiliating than taking a dump on a paper plate and trying to scrape some into a specimen jar!
A bucket? Luxury. When I had to do one, there was a sheet of tissue paper I was supposed to lay on top of the water to catch the stool, then scrape a sample with a wooden stick onto the sample card.
The problem with that is that the paper needs to be flushable, so once it gets wet it’s really not strong enough to support a turd being dropped on it. Yeah, someone really thought that one through.
In my case, I was to do it at home and wasn’t given any special equipment (this was the university’s little walk-in clinic).
The doc told me to urinate first, then to lay paper towels at the bottom of the bathtub and, uh, sit on the edge of the tub. It worked, but I shouldn’t have mentioned it to my roommate.
I had the luxury of the “bucket”, but the neglected to mention that you have refrigerate your sample until you bring it in to the lab. I had to do it twice. Good times.
When i described my symptons (diarrhea every 30 minutes like clockwork, and lower abdominal pain) it wasn’t 100% what i had contracted so my physician ordered blood work and stool sample.
At the time, my shower was large with the blurry glass sliding doors and a wide basin in the shower stall. I dropped trough, squatted over one of thos reusable Oscar Mayer lunch meat containers**, and gave them a hefty sample. I had never had to “aim” my sphincter before in my life–i felt very awkward even though i was totally alone. I put the lid on and wrapped it about 10 times with aluminum foil and delivered it to the doctor, then went to the lab for the blood work.
Turned out i had somehow contracted campylobacter. The local health department called me a week or two later and asked an hour worth of questions about where had i been in the previous week, what i had eaten, what my lifestyle was, who else i had been in contact with, etc.
**I was glad i had kept a handful of these plastic containers over the years for reusing with other foods. This particular container was never reused, at least not by me, as you can imagine :eek:
Like this, but it was in the office, so no refrigeration/transportation issues.
Honestly, after a few years of changing someone else’s diapers and still dealing with the occasional accident, moving my own poop around was really a non-event.
In a useless attempt to preserve some shred of dignity and to avoid any legal liability, I’m neither confirming nor denying I did this, but you might make a small (small!) pyramid of TP to support the flimsy flushable paper they give you. And keep plunger, stick, rubber gloves, Peavey pole, and HE close by.
Is this where the joke about “Harvest Moon” goes?
The bucket, the little spoon, the vials, not knowing to refrigerate so having to repeat. Yeah, I’ve done it. My catch? It was all for my then-11-year-old son. Trying to convince a very embarrassed and stubborn boy to poo in a bucket so that mom could come in and scoop for testing, twice, was more brutal than dealing with the poo. smh
When I had to do it, it was to diagnose stubborn diarrhea (that turned out to be, of all things, a BLADDER INFECTION! :eek: ). The lab technician gave me a kit and told me to take it home and follow the instructions, and I told her, “I can get you a sample right now, which is why I’m here in the first place.”
Several minutes later, I handed the completed kit to her, and a few hours later, I got my correct diagnosis (yes, they also did a UA) and I picked up my antibiotics and recovered quickly.