Do not bring us your poop!

If your stool needs to be cultured for bacteria or looked at under the microscope for parasites, it needs to be sent to the lab. There are pathologists who work at the lab and they are trained to examine your poop and figure out a diagnosis. However, pathologists are the only doctors that are truly trained to do this. The rest of the medical community, by and large, has no idea how to examine your poop. So please, do not come into a clinic and show people a jar of your feces after lunch (or any time, really) because we will not be able to do much more than comment on the colour and smell. And really, we’d rather not have to do that either…