Stool Sample Collection

TMI Warning – this entry is about Poop and how to collect it into teeny tiny containers.

One thing about having Crohns Disease is that you are frequently asked to provide various medical professionals with samples of your poop. Over the years I’ve been given a variety of teeny tiny containers with which to collect my poop and an even larger variety of advice on how to do this.

A quick Google shows many sites giving advice on this topic, here is a sample collection:

Stool Tests @ KidsHealth.org

Childrens Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota (.pdf)

Wiki How to Take a Stool Sample

Web MD Stool Cultures

But none that I could find suggest my easy, tried and tested stool collection method.

When I was a mere 17 years old and far away from home living in a university boarding house I started to suffer from bowel problems. This was the first time I was asked to collect a stool sample. With no idea what to do I simple tried to poop straight into the little container the doctor had given me. It was messy, leaked over the sides, my hands. Really unpleasant. And remember University boarding house = communal bathrooms and toilets, so not much privacy, just a tiny half door. I can still vividly remember the horror of having to clean myself up then ask the cleaning staff for bleech to clean out the sink and the toilet.

I took my poo covered container to the doctors office and the nurse who took it from me was horrified at the state of the container. She then took pity on me and we sat down and had a chat about how to collect poo samples. Advice I still follow now I’m 32yo.

1. Purchase some plastic plates (like you use at parties / BBQs etc), oval shaped is best.

2. Invest in some disposable plastic gloves or ask the doctor for some when they are handing over the poo sample container.

3. Boil the kettle and run the hot water over a plastic plate to sterilise it.

4. Hang a rubbish bag on the handle of the bathroom / toilet door.

5. Put the plastic plate in the toilet bowl. Make sure it is sitting flat and well balanced.

6. Get your sample container out and at this point it is a good idea to label it with your name, date, time.

6a – Put your gloves on. Really important step!

7. Poop in the toilet – it will land on the plastic plate (at this point cross your fingers that the weigh of the poop doesn’t tip the plate sideways and it all falls into the toilet water, thus why oval shaped plates work better).

8. Get up, using the scrapper which is usually inside the lid of your sample collection container scrape up some poop and put it in the container.

9. Put lid securely on sample container and place into plastic bag and seal shut.

10. Tip remaining poop into the toilet. Place plate into the rubbish bag hanging on the door.

11. Sit back down and clean yourself up and flush the toilet. (You can not do the toilet paper / cleaning self thing up earlier because you don’t want to contaminate the sample with toilet paper, gross yeah).

12. Flush toilet. Gloves into rubbish bag.

13. Seal up the rubbish bag and dispose into the rubbish bin.

14. Take your poo sample to the collection centre – or if you can’t get their straight away put it in the fridge – preferably in a brown paper bag (whilst also still inside that sealed plastic bag) so no one can see it and make sure it is out of reach of children.

And there you go, quick, easy and very little mess considering the nature of what you are actually trying to achieve (poo in small container).