The fine art of toilet cleaning (WC, Loo, bano) or cf101A.1- ok to delete!

[Guest guest]

I have just spent the last half-hour cleaning the toilet in my apartment. As

I was doing so, I thought of the thousands upon thousands of times that I had

done this, my husband had done this, the kids had done this--because that is

what one must do in a household with one or more persons with cystic

fibrosis.

I have gotten better at it over the years. First I buy those chlorinated

little tablets to put in the WC itself--blue is not necessary--but that is

merely the beginning. After a major cf poop event, the real fun begins. I

flush like a mad fiend; then, I get to work rapidly; I keep a very, very

large plastic bottle of antibacterial dishwasher/hand cleaning detergent on

the floor next to the little chair. In the usa, toilets were often made

by two companies: (no joke there) and CHURCH, which prompted my

husband to announce that if he had to answer a question from " the throne

room, " he was definitely, in the terms of the CHURCH, speaking " ex cathedra, "

which in Latin means " from the chair, " or definitively, authortatively

I always spray or squirt (depending on style of container) the liquid deter

gent all over the blooming thing, and then attack it with a very

stiff-bristled brush which stands on the other side of the toilet. Then,

assuming that flushing has occurred before this, and if not, that the plunger

has been judiciously employed, I scrub the " poop " out of the thing, flush

like mad and then rinse the brush in the now chlorinated water, then set it

back in its hallowed place.

The problem with cystic fibrosis is that one does not do this once a week on

Saturday or Sunday morning; one does not do it every other day; one does not

even do it every day: ONE DOES IT WITH THE ARRIVAL OF EACH POOP BY EACH

PERSON IN THE HOUSEHOLD, and I can tell you that even carriers do a fine job

on that little throne, thus enabling it to have a fine sense of

accomplishment.

They do not tell you this when your child is first diagnosed, when you are

first diagnosed, nor even when you first see a gastroenterologist. It is a

closed subject, discussed only by this elite group of professionally trained

" poopologists, " as someone on one of the lists quipped.

I may have truly lost it this week, but I felt that the subject deserved our

close attention, being definitely cf-related! The guy from the local chain

grocery store who delivers the basics (I actually go out for produce!), after

I have ordered them on line, actually said to me one day, baffled, delivering

the unusually large number of unusually large bottles of liquid detergent,

" Gosh, Lady, just what do you DO with all this stuff? " I told him that that

was a " state secret. " He should be in on this skill? No way!

That's it, the fine art of toilet cleaning in the cf household!

n Rojas

ps--tricky, explaining that " bleach " smell and detergent " essence " to

one's guests, brave souls that they are!