Where No Man Has Gone Before

12:00 Noon. Fasting since last night. Swallowed two laxative tabs with eight ounces of water. Doc Klucka knows the best way to clear out poop. 

People always mean well. They wag their fingers and shake their heads, “Don't go skating." Toss my skates into the trunk. Strange gurgling from my abdominal region.

4:34 PM. The fast-lax was negatory. Toss back two more. Pick up the phone and call Richard. “What’s the big deal?” Richard laughs, "Just you wait!"

Doc has a family emergency and needs to catch a mid-morning flight. Right. I’ll have to report to hospital at 5:30 AM. Yah, I get to eat three hours sooner!

Ten ounces ice cold Gatorade & forty grams of powdered antifreeze down the hatch. Ten more ounces. Forty more grams.

6:55 PM. And another one gone and another one gone and another one down the hatch. Another call to the expert. Richard laughs manically, "No one escapes! Resistance is futile!" More bubbling. Pressure at both ends. Burps and hiccups. Running behind. No number two yet. Time for number four, the yucky-tasty one. Chug-a-lug. They’re not getting any better.

Something tells me that the sudden pressure is the real thing and it’s not Coke! A dash for the bathroom at the far end of the house. The deuce spews out like purple rain—convulsive, involuntary contractions and a wretched stench. Shit, urine & gastric juice with a dash of… Kill me now!

Did I really have that much junk inside or did I just violate the conservation of matter? Some of that must be my first solid meal as a toddler.

Fresh white underpants. Daughter Lisa calls. “I’m fine, thank you. The house is a stinky taco.”

Number five. Bottoms up!

The sixth and most revolting drink tops me off. Chills, a little nausea, not much else. A heavy shirt and a sweatshirt should do the trick. Pat Wendel’s in town. Says she’ll take me. “We’re leaving by 5:00 AM, ready or not.”

Break for the bathroom. Shit happens! Success. That was a nice one, pissing out of my butt—there must be some mix-up. Same terrible stench, same change of underwear. The headache is new. Bad night for dancing.

Sixth and seventh tabs, one after another. Richard calls to calm me down. I crash in the recliner.

10:35 PM. Another fluid situation, woke up leaking. Another race to the porcelain. Can’t win ’em all. Less shitty than last time, but not less shitty enough. Cleanup on aisle two and three. A warm shower. A fresh outfit. They have no idea. Stuff is piling up in the laundry basket. Depends? Not on the list.

Weak and sore, you know where. Dehydrated. Let’s have some juice! Morning can't come soon enough. From now on, towels everywhere. Headache lingers. Passing gas could be fatal. Afraid to hit the sack. Too tired not to. I'm not cut out to be a shitaholic!

Drank the last sip of juice that Doc allows. Went to bed in a stupor, underwear and shorts—the layered look—not before laying a towel under my butt.

2:30 AM. The goalie was sleeping. Tip-toed to the bathroom. Another shower. Another towel across my bed. You thought I’d forget? Should have pitched a tent in the bathroom.

4:30 AM. The phone rings. It’s Pat.

Gurgling sounds from below. Woe is me, but don't need the bathroom anymore. Nasty clothes head for the washer. Shoulda burned ’em out back. Brush my teeth. No brush for the other end.

5:00 AM. Pat drives me to St. Anthony's. Sign in. Stop upstairs at the Endo desk to sign in once more, the girls surprised that I've been rescheduled for 5:30 AM. Directed into a room with another guy who’s having a colonoscopy. Pat is shown out.

Just because I take off my clothes, slip into a dress and lie on my back doesn't prove I'm homo. Blood pressure 141/66. They insert an IV in my arm and slap a temperature strip on my forehead. This can’t be happening.

It is.

I go over the same questions out loud that I’d already answered on paper. Pat's allowed back in. She pushes documentation at me concerning her brother's latest antics. I'm nervous about what to say.

7:00 AM. Nurses wheel my bed into the colon room, IV in the right arm hooked up to sugar water (dextrose), oxygen up my nose and a clothes pin fastened to my right forefinger to monitor pulse, breathing, oxygen. Blood pressure collar around the other arm. Pillows propped up, a sheet over me, feet dangle over the edge. Comfortable as a pin cushion.

On my right, a plain metal cart holds two rack-mounted computers. The top computer flushes clean water in; the bottom one sucks the nasties out. My eye catches a black snake protruding from the bottom box, coiled up on a clean white towel—a six-foot coral with distinctive white stripes. ("No bigger than a finger," they say.) A joystick sits in the middle. The head is a Swiss-Army-knife, housing a video cam with headlights and windshield washer for closeups, a cauterizing burner, and a gadget for collecting specimens. An air supply for inflating the colon ("otherwise it would collapse") runs down the center of the snake along with a snare to snip polyps out for a closer look.

I wasn’t ready for this complexity and can’t help thinking about random shit, like do-overs or “Red meat is good for you, isn’t it?” Then it hit me—I’m totally dependent on the anesthesiologist. Pass the Demerol.

7:35 AM. Elizabeth, Doc's gorgeous assistant, enters at this moment (to fluff the bunny, I mistakenly thought in my demented way). I would always look forward to seeing her. I agree with everything she says and always will. She turns off Snake Bone, turns on Chopin, and vanishes. Mercy, where do they keep HER?

8:00 AM. Doc saunters in with two mean ladies. “It’s gonna be a Cadillac ride. Any questions before we dive in?” (He didn’t say, “How ya doin' butthead?”)

“What was the draw, doc?”

“There was an opening.”

“Two fingers and a tube, honey,” says one of the ladies.

“No worse than the dentist,” says the other.

They turn me on my left side, putty-butt toward the snake.

“You got the worst part at home, honey. How would you like to be here dragging an IV pole all night?”

8:35 AM. Lizzo’s Good as Hell is playing. Pat is standing beside me.

"When do they start, Pat?"

"You're done."

"Oh, real?"

What the Demerol started, the Versed finished! I turn my head and look around. I’m back in the room where it all began. A pleasant high, an amazing nap, headache is history, abs are fantastic. Time’s flying and standing still. Life is mysterious.

“Find anything, Doc?” (It wouldn’t surprise me if he found a whole civilization in there.)

“I took two polyps out of your colon for analysis. They look okay. And some diverticula. (Little ickies which protrude outwards from the colon like studs on a snow tire.) You’ll be taking Metamucil from now on.”

Doc knows his shit. 

8:56 AM. They wheel me out of the hospital. Gentlemen, start your engines; time to fill the colon with fresh shit. Pat dropped me off after we hit the first burger joint. Sooo good.

Right now, I’m in a slow motion haze without a care in the world. In a few days, Doc will give me the poop on the polyps. A horrid, rancid smell still lingers in the house. I'll invite Pat in after the detox.

I feel a toot sneaking up. Neither a solid nor a liquid be… PLEASE.

Thank you Jesus, for that third state of matter!