Going Where the Sun Doesn’t Shine

Warning: Graphic Content

Parental Discretion is Advised

This post has nothing to do with parenthood, just about getting older.

On Monday, I had to deal with people freaking out about the drop in the stock market.  It would not be the only time this week that I had to take it up the rear end.

My doctor told me that it was time.  I knew this day would come eventually, I just didn’t think it would come so soon. He said that I had to get a colonoscopy.  “Do you see me using a walker with tennis balls on the bottom or watching Wheel of Fortune 14 hours a day?”  “No” he said.  “Then I don’t need a colonoscopy because I’m not old enough.”

I’m not sure which I dreaded more, the medical proof that I am officially old or what I was about to endure.     

I followed instructions and didn’t eat anything the day before the procedure.  You truly don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.  When you can’t eat for a day and a half everything looks delicious.  My daughter, in the ultimate act of cruelty, left one Ritz cracker on her plate after dinner.  My mouth watered as I stared down that wafer of buttery goodness like a cheetah stalking a gazelle on the Serengeti.  Surely one cracker wouldn’t make a difference.  My system could process and pass that way before my exam.  Doctor’s orders won over because I knew with my luck that cracker would get lodged in my colon and I would have to repeat this process next week.  I walked away from the table with a defeated look on my face like a kid who just dropped his ice cream on the ground.

Then, the cleansing process began about 4 pm the day before the exam.  I had to take two doses of “cleanser” to clean out my system.  They should label it “diarrhea juice” both for the taste and the effect.  I’ve never actually drunk diarrhea, but I have to assume that it tastes very similar to what I drank.  So, I took my first dose, and the waiting began.

 Anytime I’m having gastrointestinal trouble (regardless of which end is involved) I play the mental battle of “I’m really comfortable on the couch. How long can I stay here until I have to get up to go to the bathroom.”  The instructions never mentioned how long it would take for “Wonder Lax” to start doing its’ job.  After about ninety minutes, I got the gurgles.  I could feel something percolating in my stomach, and it turns out that in this situation the answer to the aforementioned question is approximately .000008 seconds.  I barely made it to the bathroom.  Dave Barry describes the process as the space launch and your body is the space shuttle.  No truer words have ever been spoken. 

I had a shuttle launch about every 20 minutes.  After my fourteenth trip to the launch pad, I thought, “That has to be it.  Nothing else could possibly come out of me.”  I could not have been more wrong.  Where is all of this coming from?  My colon must be long enough to stretch to Peru and back to be able to hold all this liquid.   

Just as the shuttle launches started to occur less frequently, it was time for the second dose of Wonder Lax.  Apparently, the bartender misunderstood my order and gave me saffron Gatorade.  It still tasted like diarrhea, but now my launch was bright yellow.  I tried to go to sleep around 11:30, but the gurgles woke me up twice more.  Surely, my bowels were officially cleansed at this point.

Nope, I woke up in the morning for what I assumed would be the final launch.  I hadn’t eaten anything in 36 hours nor drank anything in 12 hours, yet somehow my body found a way to produce enough fuel for another launch.  Maybe I should’ve eaten that Ritz cracker.

My wife drove me to the endoscopy center, and she was not allowed in the waiting room due to COVID restrictions.  That worked out well since there wasn’t an empty seat in the waiting room.  Normally when I’m waiting for a doctor’s appointment, I look around the waiting room and wonder what everyone else is there for.  Not this time.  I knew.  We all knew.  Nobody talked to each other or even made eye contact with each other while we waited.  Maybe we were all just too embarrassed by what we all went through the day before or because we knew we were all about to be violated by a medical probe several feet long.

After the previous day’s experience, I had one dreadful thought that kept running through my head.  After thirty minutes in the waiting room, that thought became a reality.  I got the gurgles again. 

My biggest fear throughout this process was that my body would somehow retain a gallon of liquid and hold it until the procedure.  I’ve seen video footage of damns breaking and the ensuing deluge.  I can only imagine that is what it would look like as soon as the doctor inserted the probe.  My current state of gurgles told me that my body was doing exactly what I had feared.

When the nurse took me back to pre-op, she asked if I wanted to go to the bathroom.  Thank the Lord.  My body somehow managed one final launch and I no longer feared that I would spew holy hell all over the doctor and nurse during my procedure.   

She took me down to the room where I met the doctor and he enthusiastically thanked me for coming in as if he worked in a car dealership and I just helped him hit his quota for the month.  He told me that they were going to put me under anesthesia.  He said they do in case he has to remove anything.  I assured him that there was nothing up there, but I would take the anesthesia anyway because I could use a nap.  And that is the last thing I remember until I woke up in post-op.

Then the doctor came by and told me that I had a nice butt.  Well, he said everything looked great with my colon, but I know what he meant.