“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”—Sharon Begley.
The King of Farts
At this time, the fall of 1995, my commute to work (I am a programmer/systems administrator/help desk tech) was a short drive—10 minutes. And I made a strange observation. I was farting on every trip. Soon it became apparent that I was farting throughout the day, every day. It was happening with such frequency that I engaged my chronograph watch and timed it. Every seven minutes. Yep, you read that right. I was farting every seven minutes like clockwork. I also would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night just to fart. And I made another set of curious observations. My stools would often float and what was submerged would effervesce. If you are familiar with the old American Alka-Seltzer commercial of the 70s, it reminded me of that.
This symptom wasn’t alarming although the consistent timing was a bit scary. Who knew the human intestine had a clock? But it got me to the medical library. What causes excessive flatulence? All the info was consistent. Malabsorbing carbohydrates is the culprit. In March 1996, I engaged some rather extreme dietary experiments to confirm this. For a weekend, I decided to skip all meals. This, I thought, should bring the gas down to zero. Quite shockingly, it had no effect whatsoever. I farted about seventy times on both days. At this point, I had no other symptoms other than the occasional diarrhea from that other previously established condition, which seemed unconnected. But I figured I should think about getting tested formally for malabsorption at some point.
Then another weird symptom appeared. It was the transverse colon again, and the discomfort was at least as I can best remember it a bit similar to, but not quite the same as the transverse eel. It lasted for about 20 minutes, and it was gone. Then a month later, it happened again. What the hell was that, I thought? Whatever it was, it sure was super uncomfortable and weird.