I grew up in a household that was not precisely poor, but we were financially stressed the whole time I was growing up. My father died suddenly when I was five of a rare cancer leaving a wife, three sons, a mortgaged house, car payments – offset by a very small pension and an even smaller insurance policy. We were forced to move into my grandmother’s house and our former lifestyle changed a great deal.

My mother had to find a job to support the family and was gone from the home most of the day from early morning until just before dinner time. This, I believe, left her guilt ridden about not being the perfect nurturing stay-at-home mom she was before my father’s death. To make up for not being around so much, she became almost obsessive about keeping us healthy and keeping us out of trouble.

With little money for things except food and other essentials we rarely had doctor’s appointments. Except for emergencies and required vaccinations, my mother relied upon the remedies and treatments she had learned from her mother and grandmother as she grew up during the depression. It also meant that given the choice between drugs from a pharmacy to treat an illness or the using big red enema bag in the hall closet – the enema usually won. In almost all cases, it was her first choice for a possible cure.

I returned from summer YMCA camp when I was fifteen and found white worms when I looked in the toilet-bowl and I was so worried that told my mother. She was very worried too – first because pinworms are very contagious and because her youngest son was obviously being eaten alive from the inside out. (At least that is how she seemed to think!) So off to the doctor we went for one of those rare visits, bearing a stool sample in a clean peanut butter jar. Three of my aunts were nurses who worked for separate doctors in our town and my aunt Philomena “Aunt Meenie” worked for the doctor I saw on this occasion.

So there I was, after the preliminary weigh-in, blood pressure, and oral temperature, being told to undress from the waist down with my mother and Aunt Meenie in the exam room – with no inclination to leave. No gown was offered since children were accorded no privacy so I had to sit on the paper covered table, hands trying to cover my genital area, waiting for the doctor. The doctor arrived and said he saw the stool sample and needed no more evidence to diagnose pinworms. He said otherwise he would have put tape on my anus and looked under a microscope for eggs. He did however have me bend over the table, spread my cheeks, and he looked at the irritation I had from scratching the itch around my butt.

He said he would prescribe some medicine which would kill the worms over a course of a couple of weeks and I would have to stop biting my fingernails, bathe daily, change my underwear every day and put on clean pajamas every night. I did not think that was so bad. To my mother he said she would need to clean and vacuum every day, especially any surfaces I touched, and change my bedding every day. Then he left the room. Aunt Meenie took my mother aside while I dressed and they talked about her own battle with pinworms when her daughter came down with them. I only heard snatches of the conversation, but I did hear “enemas” mentioned more than once. Since the doctor did not say anything about enemas, I believed it was just her opinion. I should add that my mother believed everything a doctor or nurse said was gospel, and she would take their advice as an order direct from the almighty!

My mother got a prescription and treatment slip, paid the 7-dollar fee, and we left for the drug store. In the local pharmacy, while waiting for the druggist to fill the prescription, my mother browsed the home health aids section and selected a Rexall Victoria combination syringe. I asked her why she needed that and she said, “It’s for you. I cannot use the family enema bag since the worms are very contagious. I have to have a bag just for you from now on.” After picking up the prescription she took both purchases to the counter where she and the owner’s wife had a big conversation about the scourge of pinworms and how difficult this teenager (me) would be about getting enemas from his mother! My mother always overshared way too much information. Embarassing? – you bet it was! More so since this was the first time I had heard that enemas were in my near future!

We got home and I was told the prescribed treatment – as printed out in the doctor’s bad handwriting on a paper slip – was one of the horse pills “Pyrantel” once a week for three weeks starting that day followed by a soapsuds enema at bedtime for the three days after each pill for three weeks! After three weeks if the infestation continued I was to see the doctor again. So it began!

Following dinner I took the first pill, that caused me to gag up what I assumed sewage would taste like if I tried to swallow it. Shortly thereafter my mother reminded me we had an appointment in the bathroom and I followed her like the condemned man going to execution. She opened the new pasteboard box and took out the enema bag she had purchased that day. She filled the sink with warm water and as I had seen her do many times, she swished a bar of Ivory soap in the water until it was milky in color. She took the white rectal tip, steel clamp, red hose, and the hose adapter out of the box and connected them. She had brought a Boontonware cup to the bathroom with her and said that would be “your cup” until I was cured – and she used it now to add cupful after cupful of soapy water into the bag until it was completely full and swollen. After screwing in the hose she hung the swollen bag from the towel rack over the tub opened the clamp and allowed a stream of water to jet into the tub. Unlike the old red open topped enema bag I was used to seeing, this bag had a dimple in it’s side when full – which I would learn would disappear when about 1/3 of the water was injected. She retrieved a jar of Ponds cold cream from the bathroom shelf before sitting down.

After my mother sat down on the edge of the tub she said, “OK, you know what to do now.” I did. I took off my jeans, reluctantly dropped my white underpants while trying to preserve my dignity a bit, and knelt on the bathmat and bent over the tub. She opened up the Pond’s cold cream – her lubricant of choice – and coated the nozzle with some of the slippery stuff. The scent of cold cream filled the air. She also put some on a tissue and swiped it across my pucker. Using one hand she parted my left cheek and with her other hand slowly slipped the nozzle into place. She remained holding the nozzle seated in my behind while she unclipped the steel clamp with an impossibly loud CLICK.

Kneeling over the tub rim, I was staring directly at the swollen bag hanging from the towel rack and I could see it slowly going flat from the top down as I could feel the water filling my gut. I saw the dimple disappear in the side of the bag and it looked like the bag was still full! I was starting to feel urgent and I didn’t think I could take any more solution. I told my mother I needed to stop and use the toilet and was told, “I’ll stop it for a minute , but you have been taking a full enema bag since you were twelve. This has to go deep in your bowels to work or you won’t get rid of the worms. I’ll stop it now and you take deep breaths and see if that helps. If we stop now, we’ll have to start all over with a full bag. It’s your choice!”

After a minute I said, “alright. You can open it again.” I felt the rush again but was resigned to take it all and get it over with. The bag was about 2/3 flat and I was getting desperate for it to end. The bag did not seem to be flattening at this point. My mother noticed the flow seemed to have stopped and lifted the bag with her free hand – the other still held the nozzle in place – raising it as far as her arm would reach. I was hurting and asked her to stop but was told her usual, “just a little more.” Finally I heard the slight sucking sound that signaled the last of the solution was done. The steel clamp was closed and she withdrew the nozzle, putting the bag into the sink. “You can use the toilet, but don’t flush because I have to see how it is working. And don’t throw too much toilet paper in the toilet – I have to see what you do.” She left me alone to spare me that indignity at least. I sat on the toilet and released a flood of biblical proportion. Seriously, I think food I ate years ago came out of me.

After a long session on the bowl, I walked out of the bathroom and called my mother to witness the production. She looked it over – I didn’t see a barrel of worms in residence – but she seemed happy. She flushed the results and started filling the sink again. I thought maybe she had to wash out the enema bag, but she rinsed it out and started filling it again using the cup. I asked incredulously, “What’s going on? You told me I had to take a soapsuds enema, not two enemas! That wasn’t in the note.” She said, “You know you always get a rinse after a soapy enema. You don’t want that soap bothering you all night do you?” I said, “The note said one enema, not two.” She said, “Your Aunt Meenie said she always gave her girls a rinse enema after the soapsuds and I should do the same for you. You want to get better don’t you?” I just said, “She’s not the doctor. He said one enema!” My mother, now exasperated, said, ”Don’t fight me on this, you’re taking this enema. If you keep arguing, we’ll make it three enemas!”

Sighing surrender, I knelt back on the bathmat and bent back over the tub. As before, my mother sat on the tub rim, parted my cheeks, and inserted the nozzle freshly coated with cold cream. The click came and the water started, much warmer than the soapsuds solution. To my horror, the warm water filling my bowel and my mother’s hand on my butt was giving me an erection! Although I had a lot of enemas from my mother and a few from my aunts growing up, I had never experienced this particular reaction. I moved a bit closer to the tub to hide my growing ‘problem’ and my mother thought I was trying to pull away and have the nozzle fall out. “Back up, where are you going?” she said. I answered that, “I just needed to get more comfortable.” In response, she tilted her head sideways to see what the problem was and could not miss that my once flaccid penis was standing straight out, literally poking the tub. “Oh,” she said, “sometimes that happens. It’s your body just reacting in a natural way. Don’t get all weird about it, it even happened when you were a baby! Don’t let it bother you!”

It was weird, though. Unnatural to have a boner in front of your mother! The more she talked about it, the worse it got – and the warm water certainly increased the stimulation. The bag flattened bit by bit, the dimple disappeared, and I was caught between the increasing urgency in my gut and the intensity in my groin. “Almost done” I heard as she weighed the bag to judge what was left. “Just a little more” I was assured as she lifted the bag higher to force the last of the water into my behind. Finally the sucking sound signaled it was done. Once again, the nozzle was withdrawn and the bag deposited in the sink. I made a break for the toilet giving into the urgent situation in my bowels, ignoring the unicorn protruding from my crotch! Once again I flooded the toilet, and as the flood subsided, so did my erection.

After I recovered and retrieved my underwear and jeans my mother came in, cleaned the bag and hose, and hung them to dry on the towel rack. I was disturbed that everyone in the house would know I’d had an enema, but with a single full bathroom and tub in the house, there were very few secrets! At least my older brothers who would tease me interminably were both overseas in the Army and would not be there to witness my embarrassment.Soon enough I was in bed and my mother came in to comfort me. She said “I know this upsets you, but it is necessary for you to get well. I worry about you so much and I want you to get better. I hope you understand that everything I am doing is because it is for your own good and I love you.”

That was day one of my battle with pinworms. I would have nineteen total enemas over the course of three weeks – one had to be repeated since I could not hold the full bag. I only experienced one more erection during the pinworm war and those three weeks no doubt started this particular proclivity I have for medically necessary enemas – which I know are for my own good. This was 50+ years ago and if I could go back in time it would be when I was 15 and got pinworms……