Reddit user Afraid-Reindeer-8940 shared how her family's stomach problems turned into an infrastructure issue.
According to her, she and the rest of the household contracted gastroenteritis - an inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract that causes a combination of diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal pain and cramps.
“It was the worst experience of my life, worse than a cesarean section. I went through all five stages of the disease, constantly washing myself, sometimes even waking my husband to say goodbye because I didn't think I could bear the pain. And of course, I was constantly cleaning the clogged toilet, but I never once thought about how much damage all this could actually cause“, the author writes.
After a few days, the illness began to subside. Suddenly, the household discovered that sewage was flowing from the sewer in the basement. The woman called the craftsmen, and the plumber arrived and removed a huge lump of toilet paper and feces from the sewer pipe. In doing so, he cleaned it completely - right up to the point where it enters the pipes that serve all the surrounding houses.
„The worst thing is that part of the blockage spread further after we cleaned the sewer, clogging the common sewer of all the apartments in the block. The city called in a crew to clean the pipes with a high-pressure hose, and I'm watching them bring in an excavator to dig out this pipe because the hose couldn't handle the blockage!," the author said.
She finds only one positive in this situation - her family didn't have to pay for the workers' expenses because the incident technically occurred in municipal pipes. She says her gastroenteritis ultimately cost taxpayers five thousand dollars.