When your poop is dark brown and almost black it's usually an indicator and means that you have some bleeding in the upper part of your gastrointestinal tract.
Some other medical conditions that can cause dark, tar-like stool include duodenal or gastric ulcers, esophageal varices, a Mallory-Weiss tear, and gastritis.
When you have a partial bowel obstruction you might have pain, nausea, vomiting, and cramping.
Most of the time, complete bowel blockages require a stay in the hospital and possibly surgery.
However if your bowel is only partly blocked, your doctor may tell you to wait until it clears on its own and you are able to pass gas and stool.
Impacted poop will appear as and look like a large and hard mass of poop that is too large to pass through your rectum and so it gets stuck.
Sometimes a doctor may need to remove the impacted poop.
Signs that you may have impacted poop include fewer than three bowel movements per week. hard, dry, or lumpy stools. difficulty or pain when passing stools. a feeling that not all stool has passed.
If the impacted poop or impacted stool is not too severe then you can and should remove the poop with your finger.
Sometimes doctors will use some gloves and their finger to remove impacted poop.
Doctors will sometimes put on gloves and use their fingers to remove some peoples impacted stools or feces when they have a bowel blockage.
In more severe cases surgery may be needed to remove the impacted stool but usually manually removing the impacted stool or feces with your gloved finger will work just fine.
When you have a bowel blockage you'll have trouble pooping or may not be able to poop at all and may have stomach cramps, abdominal pain etc.
The most common symptom of having a blockage in your bowels is abdominal pain that comes and goes and is crampy feeling.
Some other symptoms of a blockage in your bowels are constipation that won't go away, swelling of your abdomen, loss of appetite, vomiting and an inability to pass gas or fart or even the inability to have a bowel movement when you need too.
Sometimes using laxatives or using an enema is enough to get your bowels moving when you have a blockage in your bowels and in some cases the blockage in your bowels may require manual removal of the feces that are blocked in your bowels by a doctor.
So if you can't get rid of the blockage in your bowels within a few weeks then you should see a doctor because if the blockage in your bowels is left untreated and the poop is not removed from your colon or bowels then it can back up enough to cause death in some cases.
So always see a doctor if home treatment for the bowel blockage doesn't work within a few weeks.