Step Two

Colon Hydrotherapy

Yes, it's as unpleasant as it sounds. 

The second step in preparing for a fecal microbiota transplant is to get colon hydrotherapy 8-12 days before your first treatment. 

It's not too common, so I drove about an hour to get there. 

Let's just say I would never do that if I didn't have to. First off, it just seems like a bad idea most of the time and clearly removes plenty of good bacteria, if you've got 'em. I could maybe see doing it as sort of a "cleanse" (God, I hate that word), if you know you have serious gut dysbiosis and are starting a healing, gut-cleaning diet, like GAPS or SCD. But once you get started and you have a healthy diet and are seeing improvements in symptoms, it seems counterintuitive to then go and flush all that hard work out. 

Literally. You essentially stick a thin, gentle garden hose up your butt, and then turn it on and let 'er rip. You basically spend an hour or so feeling like you have awful watery diarrhea–cramps and all, which I wasn't expecting. The insertion was also uncomfortable and er... difficult. I had a hard time believing it was going to stay in. I'm sure others with IBS/IBD histories feel similarly about that orifice being a strict one-way street given the torment it has caused me my entire life. 

But I digress. The woman was very kind and professional. She offered to stay for the procedure. Not exactly my idea of comfort, but to each their own. And it was uncomfortable, and I don't just mean because of the cramps. There's something fundamentally and viscerally uncomfortable about experiencing diarrhea and not being on a toilet. Think about it. Practically your whole life you've been trained that finding a toilet is of utmost important when you gotta go. So to be deprived of that is.... uncomfortable. 

After the procedure they send you home with a printout about what to do for the next 24 hours and how to eat for optimal colon health in the future. For the first day, you're just supposed to eat light, pureed foods, which is fine. However, for optimal health in the future, they're a big fan of the whole raw vegan, ra-ra soy thing. Oh, well.