Enema thoughts and encounters

In my last post, I mentioned a piece of paper I had found with an interesting experience I had scribbled onto it. Tonight, I thought it appropriate to post, since it was sort of an inspiration for this blog in the first place!

This story describes me as a first semester junior nursing student taking part of a module, which was a set-up where nursing students reviewed certain nursing skills individually with a senior nursing student. This module...was the enema module. Before I did this module, I don't think I really knew what an enema was.

Now I know. And so, for your enjoyment:

"When she lifted the towel that so modestly draped the model, my first thought was simply, 'Wow.'

It was a perfectly shaped pair of buttocks. They were conveniently parted, a handy anus staring up at me like a dark eye. The buttocks were even nicely tilted upward at a lovely diagonal angle as if to say, 'Here I am. Enema me.'

'Is that a model made especially for enemas?' I asked, genuinely curious.

The senior nursing student nodded. 'Yep. They made it just for that. But,' she lowered her chin and raised her eyebrows knowingly. 'Inserting them is not as easy as this.' She turned back to the model. 'Especially if they are particularly obese,' she muttered.

The mental image of me struggling to keep a large derriere at bay suddenly flashed through my mind. Interesting.

Taking the end of the long plastic tube connected to an empty fluid bag, she rolled it in a small puddle of slippery liquid soap on a paper towel and handed it to me.

Tentatively, I stuck the tube into the gaping black hole, feeling it slip in quite easily.

'Do you know how far to put it in?' she quizzed me.

"Three to four inches,' I recited from my textbook, still slowly sliding. I didn't think I had put it in that far yet.

Suddenly, I seemed to have hit some resistance. The tube wouldn't advance any further.

'Surely that wasn't three to four inches!' I thought, pushing the tube harder. It still didn't budge.

Putting my hand on the plastic butt to stabilize more pushing, I shoved the tube forcefully, but to no avail.

I looked up at the senior apologetically. 'I wouldn't really do this to a real patient,' I felt I had to explain.

'I think you got it in there,' she said, taking the tube from my fingers. 'You have to go just past the sphincter.' She drew it out a little, then handed it to me. 'Try and feel the give of the sphincter.'

Pondering the strangeness of the word 'sphincter,' I drew the tube in and out a few times, this time somehow able to feel when I pushed past it. I realized that three to four inches was smaller than I thought, and that I had probably put the tube waaaaaay up into the rectum that first time.

Again, the image of me actually doing this to a human seemed far fetched, and I wondered if I had gone into the right profession after all. Sticking tubes up people's butts? Who does that?

I guess nurses do. And that's why, my friends, we practice first on non-feeling, mute, conveniently-angled plastic models first. So when you are in the hospital, unable to poo, and the nurse comes in with her tube and such, remember to test her accordingly: 'So, how far does that thing go up, exactly?'"

*Note: I have not yet, in my limited experience, given an enema yet. I rather hope to avoid it entirely, but...I think that hope is a vain hope.