Author’s Note: This column originally was published in June 1995 on my now defunct personal web page. I refurbished it a bit here, cleaning up the prose a little and removing some of the more stunning displays of my skills with adjectives. After reading the original again tonight for the first time in years, I thought there’s a time and place to be judicious with the descriptive language. This was one of those times. After reading this, you might think, “Now just what in the heck did he cut out?” Trust me. Have keyboard. Will use it. My recent edits aside, I am guessing you will end up deciding that only a truly warped individual who spends far too much strapped into his computer chair would dare write this for public consumption. I am that warped guy.
This is a true story.
It resembled one of those alien space probe gadgets with an action racing remote control unit.
And as the doctor advanced toward my posterior with this half K-Tel, half Weird Science set prop thingamabob that he planned to root into a most private place, I nearly scampered off the exam table, pants around my ankles and howling.
I am, of course, referring to a colon exam, more affectionately known as a Sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy. The pamphlet my doctor handed me early last week to help explain what we, in the interest of good taste, will refer to as “the procedure,” described the apparatus as being “a flexible, fiber-optic camera that would be gently inserted into…,” well you know where.
I was glad to hear that they planned to be gentle and that the doctor and nurse were not planning on jousting my ass from horseback. A guy could break into a sweat thinking about a television camera being jammed, with a certain amount of lower forearm strength, into the backside of his front by a benignly smiling nurse.
When I arrived for my doomsday appointment for the procedure, obviously I was a tad on the jumpy side. (We males are furiously suspicious of anyone who wants to introduce foreign objects into our bottoms.) After a few anxious minutes in the waiting room, the good nurse called my number with a cheery voice one might expect from a school teacher and not from someone who, in just moments, would be probing parts of my body that I’d just as soon remain an unchartered territory, where no human has gone before.
So when I entered the exam room, I was surprised to see the standard exam table, with the obligatory disposable tissue covering and the standard jars of cotton balls and tongue depressors. I guess I was expecting an iron maiden and hot pokers. Then I spied the device that would be inserted into my no man’s land during the procedure. I began to sweat as the nurse made a few a few minor adjustments to what can only be described as a lightsaber attached to a standard camcorder.
She told me to drop my drawers, climb under the sheet and wait for the doctor. I resisted an urge to ask her if they’d all like to go out for a spot of lunch and get to know each other a little better, as I usually have my scruples about probing nether regions on the first date. She didn’t seem like the humorous type, so I refrained in the interest of not, um, inspiring her to make the whole experience any more memorable than it had to be.
So, with a fair amount of dread, I dropped my drawers and crawled under the sheet, trying to appear casual. This, I might add, is quite difficult given the gravity of the situation at hand. While she and the doctor were outside planning the invasion of my southerly territories, I had a chance to get a good look at the apparatus, and I was somewhat relieved to see that from the right angle, that the business end of the device kinda of looked like a length of extra-thick coaxial cable—you know, the kind of cable that delivers your cable television to your TV or the kind we old-school computer nerds used years ago for networking cable.
I decided to resist the urge to give the field goal gesture that I often give when making the ethernet connection on my computer network at home.
Somehow, I just didn’t think that the good folks at the butt doctor clinic would find the humor in an off-color computer geek joke. When the doctor (looking a great deal like a prison camp guard, I might add) entered, I tried to make the clumsy chit-chat that we all try when we’re about to be embarrassed out of our minds by an invasive medical procedure. He, however, was all business, obviously ironing out the final details of his voyage into my deep space nine.
He bade me to enjoy the show on their 27-inch color television. I said, “thank you,” while wondering if this just might be an unwanted insider’s view of one part of my body that nature obviously placed on our undersides so we couldn’t see it.
He explained that the device would be advanced (damn the torpedoes, charge!) into my, well, you know, so that they could see if I had developed any polyps in my colon. He further explained that the device was equipped with a camera, a light, a suction device, a device for spraying water and a biopsy device. I resisted the obvious urge to ask whether it could slice, dice, chop, purée, and frappé my milkshakes. I’m not always able to quell the urge to be a smartass, but at times like these, I think that my sense of self-preservation outweighs my need to be witty.
Without much ado, the procedure was underway. I’m not sure what I expected, but I was surprised with how, uh, matter-of-fact the doctor was with the whole thing. I guess I thought he might have some kind words for me or that perhaps he would tell me to buck-up and keep a stiff upper lip or something. Instead, he just plowed ahead, as it were. I can’t say that the departure into space was tortuous physically (or at least, I didn’t cry out for the mercy of the gods), but I can tell you that it was one of those odd, unpleasant and uncomfortable experiences that are best not spoken about around the dinner table (you’re not eating while reading this, right?).
Perhaps the most poignant observation I could make is that one finds it difficult to appear dignified while total strangers are plowing the back 40 as it were. The visual experience was one I’ll not soon forget. And the audio…let’s just say that the audio was wholly terrifying.
In the end (that’s exactly where they were spelunking, too), the entire exam took about 20 minutes. Although it looked as though they traveled through galaxies of the abyss, I’m told that they actually only perused a few feet of colonspace. Then again, for me, a few feet inside my tuckus was farther than Kirk ever journeyed in his five-year voyage through space.
I left the exam center that day feeling, well, violated in a way that I cannot quite describe (imagine that). Of course, I was pleased to learn that everything down under was just as it should be and that at least for the time being, all was good. Having lost my father to colon cancer when I was a teenager, I know exams like these will be commonplace for me in the years to come. I just hope that I can keep my sense of humor about them. It’s easy to laugh now that I’m home, I’m wrapped from head to toe in a large blanket with the lights off, and the door is securely bolted.
