Colonoscopy by Dave Berry

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, 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 urinalcleanser, with just a hint of lemon. The instructionsfor MoviPrep, clearly
written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state
that after you drink it, 'a loose, watery bowel movement mayresult.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you mayexperience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is anuclear 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 hada 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 drinkanother liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, yourbowels 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 worriedabout 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 withwhatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room fullof other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained spaceand 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 evenmore naked than whenyou 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. Atfirst I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then Ipondered 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. Youwould have no choice but to burn your house.
>
When everything wasready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with anurse 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 thesong 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 wasback 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.