Five Stars. Exploded Here During a Medical Crisis.

“Five stars. Exploded here during a medical crisis. Key was attached to a muffler. Would crap here again in an emergency.

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much from a Good2Go off Highway 20, but this place exceeded all expectations in the worst possible moment of my life.

The acoustics? Excellent. Echoed every desperate decision I made in that room. A mother and daughter waited outside the door and offered an unfiltered postmortem on the smell. I left changed, cleansed, and profoundly damp.

Clerk offered me access to a truck stop shower when I returned the key. I declined, but appreciated the solidarity.

10/10. Would return under duress.”

—By a reluctant bathroom critic and unwilling veteran of rural rest stops.

Somewhere between Boise and Idaho Falls, with a recent MRI scan rattling around in my glove box and a vague “probably not more cancer” echoing in my head, my colon staged a full-scale mutiny. It had been a long week—an MRI ordered by my first oncologist in Arizona showed nodules on my lung. Not a good sign. My second oncologist in Idaho Falls thought it was “probably nothing”. I didn’t trust either of them completely or any doctors after being ignored for every symptom of rectal cancer under the sun and thought the completely conflicting takes meant I should get another opinion. That’s how I found myself in this situation, driving back from a pulmonologist’s office in Boise—a pulmonologist who seemed unsure whether I was dealing with more cancer or just an overly dramatic set of lungs. Nothing conclusive. Nothing helpful. Just: “Let’s monitor it.”

And now, 73 minutes into a solo drive through Idaho, with no towns in sight and no cell reception, I started to sweat. The kind of sweat that has nothing to do with weather and everything to do with a fast-moving disaster somewhere south of the diaphragm. I scanned the horizon and saw nothing but beige landscape and regret.

My stomach had been well-behaved all morning. I’d eaten a Lions Diet-compliant snack—a cold, leftover grass-fed beef patty wrapped in wax paper. You know, the food of champions and desperate people avoiding inflammation. But somewhere between chew and swallow, it had turned on me. Violently.

I considered the empty Tupperware container on the passenger seat. It was technically cleanable. But there are decisions you don’t come back from. Crapping in a Tupperware on Highway 20 felt like one of them. I glanced at it. It glanced back. We had a moment.

“Don’t make me do this,” I whispered.

Then, like a mirage sent by a deity with a twisted sense of humor, a gas station appeared. It didn’t have a name. Just a faded Good2Go sign and a parking lot that looked like a recently abandoned flea market. I pulled in, half-hoping they’d have a nurse practitioner on site, or at least an exorcist.

Inside, the air was thick with burnt coffee and jerky dust. A teenage clerk looked up from the register with the blank stare of someone who’s seen things—probably all of them happening in that bathroom.

“Restroom?” I asked.

He looked me up and down like he was evaluating a livestock purchase.

“You gotta buy something first.”

I nodded, desperate. Grabbed a pack of gum I didn’t want and dropped it on the counter. He rang it up silently, then reached under the register and slammed down a car muffler attached to the bathroom key.

“I’m sorry,” I said, eyeing it like it might explode.

“People steal the key,” he said flatly. “This slows ‘em down.”

“What kind of Mad Max franchise are you running here?” I blurted out. 

“I dunno, man. It’s Idaho.” 

It was roughly the size of a toddler. I carried it like a cursed bowling trophy down the hallway while I sprint-hobbled to the single-stall women’s room. You haven’t known humility until you’ve waddled through a convenience store holding a car part with your butt clenched like a steel trap. Rectal cancer is such a gift.

The bathroom itself wasn’t filthy, but it wasn’t thriving. Beige tile. Cracked plastic soap dispenser. A hand dryer with a sign that said “DOESN’T WORK. SHAKE HANDS DRY.” Someone had left a paper towel on the floor in protest. The toilet was—let’s call it functional-adjacent. It flushed, but only after three attempts and a whispered apology.

I locked the door. Sat. And then I… became something else.

There was sweating. Trembling. A moment where I thought, This is how I go. In a gas station, in Mountain Home, gripping a muffler while possibly harboring a second tumor in my lungs and a mutiny in my asshole. I gripped the handicap rails like I was about to be launched into orbit. There were noises. Animalistic, unholy noises.

Just as I finished the main event and began the ritual of shameful flushing—three times, because the toilet had the power of a dying goldfish—I heard voices outside the door. A woman and a little girl, waiting. The girl rattled the handle.

“It’s locked,” she announced. The kind of announcement no one asked for.

“Someone’s in there,” her mom said gently.

The girl pressed her face near the door. “It smells bad. Like really bad.”

Her mom sighed. “Don’t say that.”

“But it does,” the girl whispered, very much not whispering. “Is she throwing up? Out her butt?”

I stared at the ceiling, trying to detach from my body. The girl sounded a little too precocious—like she’d been workshopping her tight five for Kids Say the Darnedest Gastrointestinal Observations.

“Okay, let’s just wait over here,” the mom said, trying to herd her away like a sheepdog with no authority.

“It’s stinky,” the girl said, with the stunned honesty of someone who had walked into something bigger than herself.

Then, in a merciful turn of fate, the mom pulled her back.

“Please stop narrating everything,” she muttered.

I flushed again just for the cover noise, wiped sweat from my forehead with a paper towel someone else had already rejected, and emerged.

When I swung open the door, pink-faced and visibly damp, the little girl stared at me like I was a returning war veteran. Her mother looked at me like I had just returned from Nam. I came out of that bathroom like I’d survived combat, and this six-year-old and her mom were the ungrateful American public.

I handed the muffler-key back to the clerk, who squinted at me like he was trying to decide whether to call 911 or just throw me in the back dumpster.

“We got truck stop showers out back,” he said. “If you need to cool down.”

“Thanks,” I said, still holding the gum I forgot to pocket.

He nodded. “Been there.”

And that’s how I came to leave the following Google review:

“Five stars. Exploded here during a medical crisis. Key was attached to a muffler. Would crap here again in an emergency.”

A blog post by Rachel Smak on grief, loss, and lessons from stage 3C rectal cancer