Something for you under 45’s to look forward to: …
Here’s how bad it can get… …
When I turned 55, along with my geezer discount for auto insurance and my free intro membership to AARP, my doctor suggested a range of medical tests. One of these was the inspection for polyps. I made an appointment for 8 am on a Monday morning. …
…
I turned up on time, leaving behind in my bathroom, a stack of empty Fleet bottles. (You over-50’s know what I mean.) The doc looked at me blankly and said, “Why are we here?” and I told him. “A colonoscopy.” …
…
He said, “Oh, Chr!st, I knew there was a reason I didn’t want to come into work today.”
The instrument is a long black hose about 1/2″ in diameter, a black box and a video monitor. A little Vaaseline, and in she goes. On the monitor, it looked like a pink subway tunnel; thankfully, clean as a whistle. Then the doc “pumped me up with air,” and I felt like a mylar party balloon. The tunnel on the screen gets really wide, and then we start to move again. After a few minutes, doc gets excited and says, “Wow! Sixty centimeters!” I know that means about two feet. I can feel this little parasite crawling around under my liver. Ultimately, he pronounces that I will not die soon, not of воwеl cancer anyway, and starts to withdraw Mr. Вuтт-cam.
Ten minutes later, I am waiting in the lobby for the elevator. I slowly realize that all that air that was pumped into me is preparing for its escape. The elevator shows up. There are ten or twelve people on it. … I get on. … The elevator is hot and crowded and I am squeezed between two heavy folk. The air begins to escape, not at all quietly.
People are trying to find an unoccupied corner of the elevator to escape the symphony from my bun tuba. … Panic is close. … There is no smell, since it was only air, but the noise more than makes up for it. One woman seems about to vомiт.
It took more than six hours, (in “subjective time units,”) to reach the ground floor. The door opens and the disgusted mob in the elevator flees with undignified haste. I walk from the elevator and hear a child behind me say, “Boy, did that man ever fаrт!”
“Shush, honey, he was just here to see the doctor about it. Don’t make fun of him. He’s sick.”
The rest of the way home, I am treated to a sphincterhorn concerto in the privacy of my own car. Key of G♭.
Be warned, those of you in your late 40’s. Someday you too will face the same embarrassment.
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