It's like a GoPro camera shoved up your bum with a garden hose; however, the fun starts long before the colonoscopy, with the liquid diet which is quickly followed by a colon-cleasing solution that tastes like salty orange-flavoured windscreen washer fluid.
And then the fireworks begin! At first it's like a gentle rain, then comes the Category 5 cyclone, and my intestines become the world's worst slippery slide. By the third hour I've got nothing left to give; I'm just a hollow shell clutching my knees and praying for salvation. At some point I start wondering if my soul is leaving my body through my anus. It's like a yoga retreat but with more screaming and less namaste.
Once I've purged my entire existence, it's time to waddle into hospital and meet the admissions nurse who puts me in a white gown with my arse hanging out the back and guides me to a bed in a long line of other beds, all occupied by people in the same state of undress and waiting for the same indignity that awaits me. (They do a dozen each morning; multiply this by 250 working days, and you have about half the population of the Bay lining up for a colonoscopy each year!)
Then along comes Emily, a nice young girl, who prods first my left arm and then my right to fit the canulla that feeds me a saline drip and eventually the anaesthetic, but all in vain. "How long have you been doing this?" I ask. "Oh, this is my first day", she says and calls for Wally who's got a weather-beaten face and looks like he's been working on building sites all his life. He, too, can't find a vein, puts sticky tape over the half-dozen bruised spots he tried, and leaves it to the anaesthetist to try his luck. Turning my head and looking up and down the line, I notice everyone else happily drip-dripping away. Another thing I notice is they are all wearing red caps whereas I've been given a blue one. "Why do I wear a blue cap and not red?" I ask Rachel, the admissions nurse, who herself wears a Bluey cap. "Oh, red means they have an allergy", she tells me. What about my allergy to hard work?
Then comes the doctor who is Jewish and glances over my admission sheet. I notice him glancing just a little bit longer at the box that says "Country of Birth". Hastily I tell him, "Don't worry; I'm on your side now". Actually, I don't, but I hope he still remembers his Hippocratic Oath.
Wheeled under the bright lights, they tell me to lie on my left side and stick out my bum. "A bit more!", they prod me, "A bit more!" Haven't they seen enough arseholes already, I wonder? "See you on the other side", chirps the nurse, as the anaesthetist turns on the tap. "I don't like the sound of that", I just manage to say before soft unconsciousness envelops me. On the other side it isn't St. Peter who awaits me but Wally again. "Ham or tomato sandwich?" he asks. "Both", I say, not having eaten for a day. They're the best sandwiches I've ever eaten in my life!
The Jewish doctor comes along again, talking about divercula in the sigmoid colon and having cold-snared a semi-pedunculated polyp in the transverse colon. "All good, Manfred", he says, placing great emphasis on my Teutonic name. How does his wife greet him when he gets home? "Had a good day at the orifice, darling?"
I will not know the pathology results for some weeks, but my patient instructions sheet tells me not to drive a car, operate any machinery, drink any alcohol, or make any critical decisions for the next twenty-four hours. Does the decision to go and binge on a bucket of finger-lickin'-good KFC chicken pieces qualify as a "critical decision"?
Soon enough, it's back to my every-day routines but I've cut out and presented Padma with the section of the patient instructions which boldly state, "Your escort needs to know that you may not carry out instructions even though you appear to acknowledge them".
