I turned 50 this year, so I decided I should undergo that ol' humor columnist's gold mine of potential material, second only to the family dog—the colonoscopy.
"You never know what they might find," a fellow 50 year old said, causing me to contemplate the discovery, in my lower regions, of raccoons, possibly, or polecats.
So I slugged down the salty solution they give you to clear out the personal you-tubes, choosing, from a selection of fruity add-in powders, the pineapple. Not because I like the flavor, no. But I knew that after three hours of force-chugging, I would never want to taste that flavor again, ever, and I was right.
Sorry, pineapple, but it was you or cherry, and that's a no-brainer.
The next morning found me in a hospital gown, lying on a gurney under pre-heated blankets. It felt like a spa day, except the phone of the guy on the next gurney kept ringing every three minutes with a jaunty jungle beat which terminated in a chirp of monkeys.
Evidently it was out of his reach. For half an hour.
The lady on the other side of me was blabbing to the nurse how she was dating a toxic taxicab driver. I think. She had a heavy accent.
The sensation of rolling flat on my back on a gurney was strangely fun, though; I felt like an extra on "Grey's Anatomy."
They rolled me into "The Room," as the nurse called it, which sounded a little ominous. The lights were dimmed and I thought I heard Taylor Swift singing, but it was apparently only the colonoscope warming up.
They hooked me up to the anesthetic, and I watched a little monitor screen next to my bed. As the drugs kicked in I went all woozy, the doc began to work, and I could have sworn the little TV had a show on about colons.
It was pretty graphic, but really boring. Just before I passed out I remember thinking, "I can't see that getting renewed."
I woke up in the recovery room and the nurse told me the doc had performed a polypectomy, and I could call for the results in a week. (Students of history will also remember that Polypectomy was a decisive general in the Trojan Wars.)
The results? I am fine. The polyps were benign, and rather cute, truth be told. Not raccoon cute, but in the ballpark.
Now pardon me. My dog seems to be lobbying for my attention.
. . .
© George Waters, 2012
