DISCLAIMER: Telling you up front: Way too much personal information ahead. You may not want to read this. Yet I found it to be a fascinating, yet horrifying, experience that informs us as to what lies ahead, should we be lucky enough to grow old. But fair warning.
A few months back I realized that if I dropped dead or was in a fatal accident my wife would be in a pickle if she decided not to abandon our kids – at least for the week it took her to get over me and the two additional weeks it would take her to remarry. So I applied for some term life insurance.
Everything went well until they found an entry in my medical records wherein I asked my doctor about some blood on toilet paper – no doubt after eating Chipotle. Instead of giving me a trial sized tube of prescription strength Preparation H, which is what I was angling for, he just wrote it down in my chart in order to rat me out to my future would-be insurance underwriter.
Jump forward to the insurance company reviewing my file and seeing “blood on toilet paper,” which they read as “end stage colon cancer.” They wrote me a nice letter telling me no insurance unless I have a colonoscopy or flexible sigmoidoscopy.
So off to my primary doctor I went, told him to stop writing everything down and refer me to the proper ass doctor to get the thing so I can get the insurance and die in peace. But of course when my doctor’s office called the ass doctor’s office (that’s proctologist / gastroenterologist, I know, but I like ass doctor) they wouldn’t let me just schedule a colonoscopy or flexible sigmoidoscopy because I was too young, but that I’d have to go in and beg for one.
After waiting a month I went in, explained that it was an insurance thing, which the doctor completely understood. He suggested a flexible sigmoidoscopy so I wouldn’t have to be given anasthesia. Apparently, having a camera jammed up my rectum is something he thinks that I want to remember. But it had the least amount of prep and earliest appointment, and I was told it would take under 3 minutes, so I accepted an appointment for it.
I was handed a sheet which informed me how to blow out my colon before arriving at my appointment: A hell of a lot of laxatives, fasting, and two enemas. Uhh… enemas. I was not in a fraternity in college, so I have never, with the possible exception of a thermometer when I was very, very, young, had anything inserted that way. In fact, I have a tattoo on my butt cheeks, one word on each, that reads “Exit Only.” What I mean to say is I was very confused about how to get anything up there, especially on my own. Let’s just say the dog was very confused as he watched me perform acrobatics while cursing in the bathroom and leave it at that.
When I arrived at my appointment I was very surprised about how formal of a procedure it was. Maybe I set it up in my mind as less formal since it wasn’t a full colonoscopy with anasthesia. I envisioned bending over a table and biting my wallet while a pair of 400 pound orderlys held me down while the doc did his thing. But they put me in a bed, put a blood pressure cuff and pulse-ox monitor on, had me sign waivers, put a ID band on my wrist. All of that kind of made me a little more nervous, so I did what I do when I get nervous – make jokes that make others uncomfortable.
“Gee, this is a lot of trouble. Don’t thousands of gay men do this for fun pretty much every day?” That didn’t illicit much of a response other than pretending not to have heard it.
The nurse asked me if I wanted to watch on the screen. Well, hell yeah, I wanted to watch. But since they rolled me on my side looking right at the screen I didn’t really see what choice I had.
Then the doctor came in and asked if I knew what was about to happen. “Do a lot of people get this far without knowing what is about to happen, doc?” I got a “come on, dude, I have a lot of these to do today” stare. “Yeah, I know.”
At this point “Badlands” started playing as the background music which was softly playing in the room. “Great, you’re going to ruin one of my favorite songs.”
The nurse took the camera probe, and swabbed it with alcohol. “Excuse me,” I said, “but are you sterilizing the thing you are about to shove up my ass? Yeah? OK, just checking.”
Then the freakiest part – my back appeared on the screen, then my bare butt, then a fast ride to where the sun does not shine. My doctor must have either been way behind schedule, done his residency at Sing Sing, or both, because YE-OUCH. That was no fun. He said, “Try to relax.” “Sorry Doc, I’ve had three things put up my rectum my entire life, all in the last 24 hours, and this is the biggest yet.”
Finally, after 180 of the longest seconds of my life he said, “We’re done. Everything’s fine. Saw some veins that could be irritated into bleeding hemorrhoids. Come back when you’re 50.” I don’t know if that’s because that is the recommended time to come back, or because he wanted to make sure he was retired before I came back.
I was then wheeled into “recovery,” told to get dressed, take some information of fiber and hit the road. I glided out of there. Literally glided. I had to stop in the bathroom, where I removed half a liter of KY jelly from between my butt cheeks, which is curious, since I swear the doctor didn’t use any when he did the procedure.
Then out the door to freedom. I went across the street to Costco and broke my fast with a Costco dog before doubling over in pain from the 10 gallons of air that had been blown into my colon. I walked over to the cheese area and took care of that problem.
Lessons learned:
- Never tell your doctor anything.
- I would not make a good drug mule.
- There is no reason to fear Kang and Kodos any more.
