Rectum? I nearly killed em'!

Today's adventure is a colonoscopy. Usually, I want people to laugh at these weird things that life throws at us, because they're silly. Not today. Today, I want you all to suffer with me. As such, this particular anecdote will be permeated with poo puns.

You have been warned.

From what I gather, colonoscopies are bad. The reason for that isn't actually the colonoscopy. Lets say you go to the doctor and he checks your prostate. You dislike this because you feel a little like maybe this Doctor has gotten a bit further into your personal space than you would like.  With the colonoscopy, you feel bad because all of the bad things you get to do to YOURSELF. If you met a grizzled veteran who'd lost a limb during a war and told him you were about to have a colonoscopy, he would look you over with his eyes, very much the same way someone might attempt to check out an attractive woman, except exactly the opposite. He looks you over as if to say, "I want to remember you the way you are now, before the dark times." The he would say, "Oh. Oh, man. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry..." and walk away before you could talk to him about your shame.

Needless to say, after the sheer number of warnings, apologies, and pained looks, I was, as I believe the expression goes, shitting bricks.

But oh, not for long. Not for long at all.

PREP DAY:

6:30 AM:

I have awoken. Unlike most mornings, I do not want breakfast today, because I'm too busy worrying what speed a police officer with a high end speed radar would clock breakfast at when exiting my bum. Today, I'm going to put the fast in breakfast. Hey - that was a double pun!

8:00 AM:

I have arrived at work. I've provided enough details that my superiors have some knowledge of what's happening. They all keep their distance, afraid that whatever is sending me to the doctor will rub off on them, and they, too, will have someone peering into the dark crevices of their bum hole. I retire from the morning meeting to my office / windowless cave. 'This,' I think to myself, is 'what it must feel like to live in the bum.' I am the gastroentronologist of life.

9:30 AM:

The doctor's office calls and tells me it's going to cost $900. I have insurance - I have the best possible plan my company offers. Turns out, it' isn't covered AT ALL until I hit $2500 this year. That's a lot of money I don't have, which is probably fine, because I can just make up for it by not eating for the next several months. Doing the math, my company (and I) pay about $550 dollars a month for insurance. It's too bad some of THAT money couldn't go towards turning me into a human ass cannon. I feel like they should do it just to make me feel better about the whole shitty situation.  The money is going to have to come directly out of my electric vehicle funds - from one quick, efficient vehicle to another. Both are good for the environment, I guess, if you figure what goes into fertilizer, and that I can now fertilize an entire field in about seven minutes, four with Gatorade (Its got what plants crave - its got electrolytes!) So I just have to eat the cost. The thought turns my stomach, which then turns my colon. SYNERGY! I call to ask my doctor if it's okay to take my medications, and specifically ask about diazepam, also known as valium. To calm myself, I do some math. The procedure tomorrow, I'm told, will take only 15 minutes. Mathematically, that's $60 bucks a minute. That's one dollar a SECOND. If the doctor sneezes, that pause costs me, conservatively, $3.00. If he asks how the game was yesterday, that's another $15.00, at least. The man gets a McDonald's happy meal between every inhale and exhale. This quote does not include anything else they may have to do. It may cost significantly more.

Given the circumstances, I'm very tempted to tell this doctors and insurance company where they can insert the payment, but, as I think on it, this is a gentleman who has the tools and knowledge to handle that situation at a professional level, and the insurance adjusters are so full of shit, I assume they won't notice.. I attempt to distract myself by doing all the things I usually do - not eating, not drinking, and focusing intently on my asshole (the body part, not the insurance adjuster).

12:00 PM:

Arrive home. Immediately take 2 x Ducalax, which are pleasantly candy flavored and sit, patiently, waiting for the explosion.  Nothing happens.

2:30 PM:

Fall asleep waiting for the effects to begin. Have strange dreams about appraising and reviewing toilets.

3:15 PM:

Still nothing. Begin prep of phase two - this includes mixing a two-week bottle (14 servings) of Miralax into 64 ounces of Gatorade. The Miralax doesn't really mix. It's a bunch of gritty stuff in Gatorade. It looks like a bunch of sand swirling in green liquid. I do not look forward to drinking this beverage.

3:30 PM:

Nervous - mild stomach cramps begin, which could be caused by: A.) Ducolax, B.) Nerves C.) I want a goddamn cheeseburger. It has Now been about 18 hours since I consumed a proper (or improper) meal. I begin to salivate whilst passing by a vaguely bun-shaped makeup powder dish thing. I decide to smell it to see if it smells like hamburger. It smells like Miralax.

Hunger averted.

4:00 PM:

I start drinking the spiked Gatorade. It tastes like... Gatorade, but it's oddly... creamy - and I only had to drink 8 ounces - not so bad!

5:30 PM:

I had just gotten the fourth Miralax Colonaide down when I felt something. I didn't feel sick, I didn't feel ill or bad. I felt... urgent. Something needed to be purged. It felt like something inside my guts was boiling. I teetered over to the porcelain receptacle and made my offering to the Gods. It was over in moments, but it was haunting, and I know the ghosts of this moment will begin haunting me from this moment forth.

6:30 PM:

I don't want to look at Gatorade again, ever.

8:30 PM:

Trips to the toilet occur roughly once every 15-30 minutes. I have no idea how anything else can come out of me. I feel like one of those chocolate bunnies - completely hollow inside. I have made chicken broth a food substitute. It's the most delicious thing I've ever tasted, like everything from a Thanksgiving dinner rolled into one.

9:30 PM:

Please release me from this torment. I am now chained to a porcelain prison. I'm pretty sure my liquid Thanksgiving dinner is gone, along with all of my bones and muscle, my sanity, and my desire to consume any liquid, of any kind, ever.

10:00 PM:

I am confident that I could put out a fire in our back yard fire pit from my toilet using only my butthole. Possibly the neighbor's, as well.

10:15 PM:

I am confident I could stop a raging uncontrolled forest fire with only my bum hole, miralax, and a deceptively small amount of chicken broth.

10:30 PM:

I think it's over. I am an empty vessel. The doctor who looks up my ass is going to see clear to the light coming out of my eye an mouth holes.

11:00 PM:

IT WASN'T OVER.

11:15 PM: Totally unconscious.

THE NEXT DAY:

3:15 AM:

IT BEGINS AGAIN. Everything that I have shat... somehow... has been shat again. I shat as much in the wee hours of the morning as I had the entire previous day.

6:30 AM:

REVENGE OF THE TURDS. Those ghosts have indeed returned to haunt me. I'm not even sure how I still have physical mass left.

9:30 AM: I have arrived at the doctor's office. I wait for about an hour in the waiting room.

10:30 AM:

  They take me into a room with a row of beds, each filled with a man or woman farting themselves to death. I am presented with a very comfortable hospital gown that's a bit breezy on the backside - which I carefully tie up, so as not to expose unnecessary buns to the delirious folks around me. Thinking about buns has made me hungry. I decide to run to the lavatory, inside of which is a scale that I have to imagine EVERYONE steps on. I now weigh a full 7 pounds less than I did a week ago. That's a lot of sandwiches I've missed.

  When I get back, the nurse comes in and starts hooking mad scientist bits up to me. A nose thingy. Chest wire thingy. Finger thingy. It looks like a practical joke toy that will make you fart if you push the button on it. Jokes on them, I don't need the button anymore. The only thing inside of me is gas.

  They raise the arm guards and make me lay on my side. I'm rolled into a room that has everything you'd expect from a place in which you're about to experience an anal probe. Unusual lights. Strange tubes. Off putting darkness.

  All of the machines are hooked up to the tubes and things on me. I can hear my heart beat, which makes me nervous. The lady then gets a giant syringe filled with white fluid and tells me it's going to make me feel warm and I'll be asleep in 30 seconds. I have just enough time to tell the lady I DO feel warm before I'm out like a light.

  I proceed to dream about spending a nice day having a picnic on the grass at my office. The weather is nice (not too hot) and the food is good. there is no Gatorade anywhere at this picnic.

  And then I wake up. The nurse, 'Sarah' I think it was, tells me I need to wake up. I'm pretty sure I was snoring.  I begin to doze of again. Sarah looks pretty annoyed and rolls her eyes. She brings me cookies, which I'm scared to eat, and a diet coke, which somehow tastes like I'm eating pure sugar.

 I have no idea what time it is now, but I can tell you that two long, enduring farts later, she comes in to inform me the doctor will be by, and that my significant other is on her way over.

 Two farts after that, there they are. Sarah still appears irritated. The doctor tells me what parents across the world have been telling their children for years - you're an inflamed asshole. I believe the technical term was 'ulcerated proctitis.' I hope this makes you feel uncomfortable and disrupts your ability to eat, ever so slightly, so that you might enjoy the Miralax-fueled day I had and share, just a little, in my chicken nuggetless misery.

 Anyway, the doctor vanishes as quickly as he comes in. He tells me I needed a biopsy for something, but won't release results for about a week, and that my ass will bleed, and is gone. All in all, I've seen this man, who has now seen me so intimately he knows things about me that I don't know myself, for less than five minutes, total, across these appointments. Then it's over.

  I'm a bit upset about the biopsy, which means even MORE money which the $550 odd dollars of monthly insurance won't cover, which is upsetting. I eat part of a Famous Amos cookie. I am allowed to dress, then wobbled over to a wheel chair. I am placed in a car, where I am taken for food. I have no dietary restrictions, probably. For now, do whatever. Maybe I'll get more specifics in a week or so when some poor guy in a lab finishes viewing a wee bit of my rectum under a microscope.

Another three silent, odorless, everything-less farts later, I'm at a restaurant trying to pick something with the deepest respect for my butthole.

 It's possible that somewhere in my ass, 'the doctor was here' has been tattooed, however, I probably won't know. I assume I made the wise decision by going to see the doctor and did not, as they say, 'have my head up my ass.'