Dave Barry On His Colonoscopy

Hostile

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:lmao2:

ABOUT THE WRITER

Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald.

This is from news hound Dave Barry's colonoscopy journal:

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 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 d own. 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' 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 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.

On the subject of Colonoscopies...

Colonoscopies are no joke, but these comments during the exam were quite humorous..... A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies:

1. 'Take it easy, Doc. You're boldly going where no man has gone before!

2. 'Find Amelia Earhart yet?'

3. 'Can you hear me NOW?'

4. 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?'

5. 'You know, in Arkansas , we're now legally married.'

6. 'Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?'

7. 'You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out...'

8. 'Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!'

9. 'If your hand doesn't fit, you must quit!

10. 'Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.'

11. 'You used to be an executive at Enron, didn't you?'

12. 'God, now I know why I am not gay.'

And the best one of all.

13. 'Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up
there?'
 

Jon88

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Never had one, never want one. Maybe by the time I'm 40 things will have progressed to where a blood draw is good enough.
 

Faerluna

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That was hilarious. Been reading Dave Berry for years, and he's always a riot.
 

Hostile

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Faerluna;2685457 said:
That was hilarious. Been reading Dave Berry for years, and he's always a riot.
I think was one of his better ones though. Love the 13 comments at the end.
 

Signals

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:lmao2: :lmao:

I'm taking this one to work. No one going to get any thing done today.

:laugh1:
 

Signals

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This won't hurt a bit

By Dave Barry

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | I will frankly admit that I'm afraid of medical care. I trace this fear to my childhood, when, as far as I could tell, the medical profession's reaction to every physical problem I developed, including nearsightedness, was to give me a tetanus shot. Not only that, but the medical professionals would always lie about it.


"You'll hardly feel it!" they'd say, coming at me with a needle the size of a harpoon. As a child, I was more afraid of tetanus shots than, for example, Dracula. Granted, Dracula would come into your room at night and bite into your neck and suck out all your blood, but there was a positive side to this; namely, you could turn into a bat and stay out all night. Whereas I could see no pluses with the tetanus shot.


Of course, today I no longer have this childish phobia, because, as a mature adult, I can lie.


"I just had a tetanus shot this morning!" I can say, if the issue ever arises. "Eight of them, in fact!"


But I'm still afraid of medical care. And I'm not encouraged by TV medical dramas such as "E.R." If you watch these shows, you've probably noticed that whenever some pathetic civilian gets wheeled into the hospital emergency room on a stretcher, he or she is immediately pounced upon by enough medical personnel to form a hospital softball league, all competing to see who can do the scariest thing to the victim. Apparently there's a clause in the standard Television Performers' Contract stating that every character in a medical drama gets to take a crack at emergency patients:


First doctor: I'll give him a shot!


Second doctor: I'll pound his chest!


Third doctor: I'll stick a tube way up his nose!


Fourth doctor: I'll find an unoccupied section of his body and cut it open for no good reason!


Janitor: I'll wash his mouth out with a toilet brush!


Now you're probably saying: "Dave, you big baby, those are just TV shows. In real life, bad things do not happen to people who fall into the hands of medical care."


Excuse me for one second while I laugh so hard that my keyboard is short-circuited by drool. Because I happen to be holding in my hand a bulletin-board notice that was sent to me by a Vermont orthopedic surgeon named either "David H. Bahnson, M.D." or "Oee Bali," depending on whether you're reading his letterhead or his signature.


Dr. Bahnson told me, in a phone interview, that he found this notice over the "scrub sink," which is the place where doctors wash their hands after they operate so that they won't get flecks of your vital organs on their Lexus upholstery.


No, seriously, the scrub sink is where they wash their hands before operating, and Dr. Bahnson said that this notice had been prominently displayed there for several months. It is entitled — I am not making this up — "Emergency Procedure: Fighting Fire on the Surgical Patient."


Yes, you read that correctly. Dr. Bahnson told me that, although it has not happened to him, fires sometimes break out on patients during surgery, particularly when hot medical implements accidentally come into contact with surgical drapes.


The bulletin-board notice discusses two types of situations: "small fire on the patient" and "large fire on the patient." There are step-by-step instructions for dealing with both of these; Step 3 under "large fire on the patient," for example, is: "Care for the patient."


I was surprised that the procedure was so definite. You'd think that, what with all these medical lawsuits, the instructions would call for more caution on the part of the doctors. ("Mrs. Dweemer, we think you might be on fire, but we won't know for sure until we have a specialist fly in from Switzerland to take a look.")


Now, before I get a lot of irate mail from the medical community, let me stress that not all surgical patients catch on fire. Some of them also explode. I am referring here to an article from The Medical Post, sent in by alert reader Lauren Leighton, headlined: "Beware Exploding Patients." This article states that nitrous oxide — which is sometimes used as an anesthetic in stomach surgery — can get mixed up with intestinal gases, which have been proven to be highly combustible in countless scientific experiments conducted in fraternity houses. If this mixture is ignited by a spark from a surgical implement such as an electric cautery, the result can be what the article refers to as "intra-abdominal fires."


In what could be the single most remarkable statement that I have ever read in a medical article, one expert is quoted as saying — I swear this is a real quote — "Patients aren't exploding all over, but there is the potential for it."


Ha ha! I certainly am feeling reassured!


No, really, I'm sure we're talking about a very small number of patients exploding or catching on fire. So if you, personally, are scheduled to undergo surgery, you needn't give this matter another thought, assuming that you have taken the basic precaution of having a personal sprinkler system installed on your body.


No, seriously, I'm sure your operation will go just fine. And even in the unlikely event that you do explode, you may rest assured that, no matter how many pieces you wind up in, every one of those pieces will, in accordance with modern medical standards, receive a tetanus shot.​
 

ethiostar

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Signals;2686433 said:
No, seriously, I'm sure your operation will go just fine. And even in the unlikely event that you do explode, you may rest assured that, no matter how many pieces you wind up in, every one of those pieces will, in accordance with modern medical standards, receive a tetanus shot.​

:lmao2:

Keep'em coming fellas.
 
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