Eleven Days Without Going. Every Test Normal. And My Doctor Just Kept Telling Me To Take MiraLAX.

I drank plenty of water. I took the MiraLAX every morning. It took somebody at the end of a night shift to tell me why that was never going to work.

Health & Digestion

I’m Karen. I’m 49. I’ve been constipated for 5 years.

MiraLAX every morning for 4 of them. Senna at night for the last 2. Three gastroenterologists. Two colonoscopies. Everything came back normal.

Go days without a bowel movement and the answer is always eat more fiber and drink more water. I already take the fiber. I only drink water.

What changed it was a tired ER doctor and four things she wrote on the back of my discharge papers. I’m six months out and I go in the mornings now. Here it is, in her order.

Four Years Of Hiding A Capful In A Coffee Cup

A capful of MiraLAX disappears into coffee. Nobody can see it, nobody can taste it. I did that every day for 4 years. Ray knew I was constipated. I thought he didn’t know it was in the cup.

I’ve looked 6 months pregnant by dinner. I lived in the same three loose things for a year because nothing else fit.

I was trying to go and nothing was coming out. Then I would lie there at night feeling like I had no room left in me.

Everything I’ve Tried. It’s All Still In The Bathroom.

The first gastroenterologist put me on MiraLAX. I asked how long. He said it’s completely safe and recommended by doctors far and wide. It helped a tiny bit, but I couldn’t complete my bowel movements, like it was still stuck. And I was told to take it every day, basically for the rest of my life.

The second ordered a colonoscopy. Normal. Then Linzess — three hundred dollars a month, because insurance wouldn’t cover it. It worked about a week and I was back to square one. The third ordered another colonoscopy. Normal. Motegrity did nothing.

In between I tried everything. Senna. Dulcolax. Milk of magnesia. The cheap magnesium oxide tablets from the drugstore. Magnesium citrate. Psyllium, Metamucil, prunes. Enemas. Suppositories.

Thousands of dollars in medical bills and still no answers. Every time I went back: all tests are normal, take the MiraLAX, drink more water, eat more fiber. I remember thinking: I give up. I don’t know what else to do. Am I stuck like this forever?

Eleven Days, Then The ER

The last time I went was a Monday. Seven days later it was Monday again and still nothing. I doubled the MiraLAX, went from 4 senna to 6, got through a whole bottle of citrate, felt the urge, and passed nothing but liquid.

By Friday I was on day 11. It felt like I was pregnant with a rock. It was literally pressing up against my organs and I couldn’t get a full breath in. Exhausted, in pain, brain fog. Ray kept asking what was wrong. I told him nothing was.

At 2am I was hunting for the Dulcolax I’d shoved behind the towels. At the bathroom door my legs folded under me and I couldn’t get up. Ray found me down there, my breathing shallow and my face hot with panic, and drove me to the ER.

They had me in a scanner before four. Eleven days of it, rock hard and high up. They told me I needed manual disimpaction. It’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me, and that’s all I’ll say about it.

Dr. Patel, about my age, brought my discharge papers, holding a coffee she’d forgotten about.

“Has anyone actually explained why this keeps happening?”

I said three doctors had told me my tests were normal and to take MiraLAX. She put the papers down.

“That’s Your Colon’s Whole Job. Taking Water Out.”

She turned them over and drew a tube.

“That’s your colon. All it does, all day, is take water back out of whatever’s going through it. That’s the job. That’s the whole job.”

“Now slow everything down. Stress, hormones, sitting at a desk. It takes longer to get through, so more water comes out of it. Dry, then hard, and your colon’s pushing on something that won’t move.”

“The water you drink isn’t the water that matters.”

“What?”

“You could drink a gallon a day. It’s taken up long before it ever gets down here. Your colon never sees it.” She tapped the far end of the tube. “And what little gets there, this end takes straight back out. That’s why drink more water was never going to help.”

Five years. Three doctors. Two colonoscopies. Nobody had drawn me a tube.

“You did what you were told,” she said. “This wasn’t your fault. The tests were looking for something wrong in the colon. There wasn’t anything, so they sent you home with the next laxative.”

The Box Says 7 Days

“That’s MiraLAX, though. It pulls water in. I’ve been taking it every day for 4 years.”

She didn’t argue.

“They’re both called osmotic,” she said. “That’s about as far as it goes.”

“That stuff doesn’t get absorbed. It picks up water on the way past and it leaves with it. That’s all it does.”

“And magnesium?”

“Magnesium’s a mineral. Some of it crosses into you. The part that stays behind works on the wall itself, and pulls water in from your side.” She put her finger on the dry end. “Down here, where you’re dry.”

“And it doesn’t only wet it. That wall is what’s been pulling the water out of it all this time. Now it pulls the other way, and it tells the gut to move.”

I asked why the MiraLAX had stopped working.

“I don’t know,” she said. “And I’m not about to invent a reason for you at this hour.”

I’d told myself I’d built up a tolerance to it. I hadn’t. It had been doing the same one thing the whole time, and as I got worse, that one thing stopped being enough.

Then she asked if I’d read the back of the box.

I hadn’t.

She wrote it down and turned the paper around. Do not use for more than 7 days.

“That’s the box you’ve been buying for 4 years. It’s written for a bad week. A bad week isn’t 4 years, and nobody ever went looking for what was underneath.”

I asked about the milk of magnesia, and the drugstore magnesium.

“When did you take them?”

“A week in. On a bad night.”

“So on top of a rock.” She drew the rock inside the dry tube. “That was a rescue — the worst night, and never again. It was never going to work like that.”

“And fiber packs in behind the rock, which is why it made you worse.”

“So what does work?”

“Water going back in. Through the wall, from your side. And not on the night you’re desperate — on a Tuesday when nothing’s wrong.”

“And magnesium won’t do the same thing to me in a year?”

“I can’t promise you anything. A stimulant works on the muscle, and a muscle gets used to being made to squeeze. This works on water. There’s nothing in there being trained to wait for it.”

The Four Things She Wrote Down

I asked what to buy. She wouldn’t name a brand.

“Magnesium oxide. Not the citrate, that’s the flush. In a capsule. Check the back — two things on that list, not twenty. And every single night — that’s where you went wrong with the magnesium.”

She wrote them on the papers.

• Magnesium oxide, not citrate
• A capsule
• Two ingredients
• Every night, not the bad night

“Start with two at bedtime, with a big glass of water. Two. Every night until you’re going properly. And as long as your kidneys are fine — if they’re not, this isn’t for you.”

Then she picked up her coffee and left.

I’m writing this at month six, on the same two capsules. It’s the first thing that hasn’t needed more of itself to work.

I sat in the car and read. Only 4 percent of magnesium oxide gets into the blood; the rest stays down there doing what she’d drawn. I ended up with my own name for it: colon rehydration. Water put back, where it had run dry.

Then I spent a week reading labels. Six ingredients I couldn’t pronounce, or a dose so small you’d need a handful of tablets to get anywhere — and a pressed tablet has to break apart before anything happens. What I wanted was two things on the label and a bottle that carried a real dose, so I could take what I actually needed. That took out almost everything on the shelf.

It Was Called WaterBack

Four out of four, on one label. Nothing else I’d picked up got past three. Ozonated magnesium oxides and citric acid from tapioca — the acid, not magnesium citrate — and nothing else. Four capsules to a serving, 1,400 mg.

I started on two, like she said — half a serving, 700 mg — with a big glass of water. It says to add two more the next night if nothing happens. I never had to.

The first night I lay there waiting for the cramps. The senna feeling. Nothing.

In the morning there was a gentle pressure, low down. Not violent. An actual urge — I hadn’t felt one of those in years. It came out soft and I didn’t have to push. None of that sitting there 30 minutes to barely pass anything.

I sat there and cried.

It wasn’t perfect from the first night. It took a week before I could count on it.

The Morning I Drank It Black

Week one, soft in the morning most mornings. By the end of it two whole days had gone by without me thinking about my stomach. Week four the senna went. Week six I stopped buying the MiraLAX. Ray watched me pour my coffee and drink it black. He set his cup down and said, “I know.” Four years, and he never once made me say it out loud.

What I notice now is the not-noticing. I don’t count the days. One morning it just stops being the first thing you think about.

On a Saturday we drove out to the place we used to go, before I stopped going anywhere. Ray looked at me across the table and said, “There you are.”

The thing she drew doesn’t hold still. Every day it sits there it dries a little more, so the week you’re having now is the easy one. I waited five years, then eleven days — the eleven days is the part I’d take back.

What It Costs Against What I Was Already Paying

★★★★★4.8/5 from 16,872+ verified reviews

Third-party tested.

WaterBack on the refill plan is $47.98 a month, $67.99 for two months, or $79.96 for three — $1.60, $1.13, or 89 cents a day.

I took the three months. At six weeks I was off the MiraLAX and not about to run out.