I called my friend, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment
for a colonoscopy. A few days later, in his office, he showed me a color
diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place,
at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis.
Then he explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in
a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully,
but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking,
quote, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!'
I left his office with some written instructions, and a prescription for
a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a
microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it
to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America's
enemies.
I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.
Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation.
In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day;
all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less
flavor. Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of
powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm
water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32
gallons.) Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour,
because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat
spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.
The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great
sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose watery bowel
movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off
your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.
MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but:
Have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep
experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the
commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the
bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything.
And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink
another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels
travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even
eaten yet.
After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep. The next morning my
wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried
about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of
MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on my friend?' How do you
apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.
At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and
totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a
room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little
curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital
garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on,
makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.
Then a nurse put a little needle in a vein in my left hand.
Ordinarily I would have fainted, but the nurse was very good, and I was already
lying down. The nurse also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep.
At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this is, but then I
pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the
bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would
have no choice but to burn your house.
When everything was ready, the nurse wheeled me into the procedure room, where
my friend was waiting with another nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the
17,000-foot tube, but I knew my friend had it hidden around there somewhere. I
was seriously nervous at this point. He had me roll over on my left side,
and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my
hand. There was music playing in the room, and realized that the song was
'Dancing Queen' by ABBA I remarked to my friend that, of all the songs that could
be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' has to be the
least appropriate. 'You want me to turn it up?' he said, from somewhere
behind me. 'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been
dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself,
because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was
like.
I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling
'Dancing Queen, Feel the beat of the tambourine,' and the next moment, I was
back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood. My friend was looking
down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more
excellent when he told me that it was all over, and that my colon had
passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.
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