Dave Barry's Colonoscopy Journal

I have been through a pretty rough summer (medically),  now to top it off , I have to have Colonoscopy this week. My sweet friend, Nae sent me this piece by Dave Barry would "perk me up" --





I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenteritis, 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, 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 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' 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.

ABOUT THE WRITER: Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald