midlifejourney.com

Too funny to be missed, this is by Dave Barry, a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald.

I called my friend Andy Sable, 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 Andy 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 Andy’s 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 that20after 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 Andy?’

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 named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand.  Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was  already lying down. Eddie 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, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room,  where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not  see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there  somewhere I was seriously nervous at this point. Andy 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 I  realized that the song was ‘Dancing Queen’ by ABBA. I remarke d to Andy  that, of all the songs the at could be playing during  this particular procedure, ‘Dancing Queen’ has to be the least  appropriate. ‘You want me to turn it up?’ said Andy, 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.  Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt… I felt  excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy 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.