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This has been around but it’s worth another look…..especially if you are about to have a colonoscopy.
 
ABOUT THE WRITER: Dave
Barry is a Pulitzer
Prize-winning humor
columnist for
the Miami
Herald.

Colonoscopy
Journal:

I called my friend Andy
Sable, a
gastroenterologist, to
make an
appointment for a
colonoscopy.

A few days later, in his
office, Andy
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, '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
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 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, 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
remarked to Andy that,
of all the songs
that could be
playing during this
particular procedure, 'Dancing
Queen' had 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.


On
the subject of
Colonoscopies...
Colonoscopies are no
joke, but these comments
during the exam were
quite
humorous..... A
physician claimed that the following are actual
comments made by his
patients (predominately male) while he
was
performing their
colonoscopies:
1. Take it easy Doc..
You’re boldly going where no man has
gone
before.

2. 'Find
Amelia Earhart
yet?'

3. 'Can you hear me
NOW?'

4. 'Are we there yet?
Are we there yet? Are
we there
yet?'

5. 'You know, in
Arkansas , we're
now legally
married.'

6. 'Any sign of the
trapped
miners,
Chief?'

7. 'You put your left
hand in, you
take your left hand
out...'

8. 'Hey! Now I know
how a Muppet
feels!'

9. 'If your hand doesn't
fit,
you must
quit!'

10. 'Hey Doc, let me
know if you
find my
dignity.'

11. 'You used to be an
executive
at Enron, didn't
you?'

12. 'God, now I know why
I
am not
gay.'

And the best one of
all:
13. 'Could you write a
note for my wife saying that my head is
not up
there?'