#450 Final Ending

All in all I’d have to say a colonoscopy is much less world shattering than people make it out to be. Going to the doctor is almost always privacy-invasive. And the notion of putting a tube in to an orifice usually engineered for moving things out is really no different than throwing up is to eating. When the scope-age was completed, they rolled me back into the prep/recovery room. As she hooked me back up to the blood pressure and pulse monitor, the nurse told me to release any of the air they’d blown into me that may be causing discomfort, then pulled the curtain shut and left. I squirmed for a bit in politeness then decided to add a baritone to the sounds of the Mornin’ butt-crackle choir I heard from the adjoining cubicles. After awhile, the nurse came back and told me the doctor would be in with instructions for both me and my driver. We are all supposed to have a driver as most of the folks opt for heavy sedation. And sedation seemed to require more air pumped in too, judging from the intensity of the wind instruments in the surrounding symphony. The doc did come in and hand me an instruction sheet for my recovery. He said since I hadn’t been sedated he could just tell me direct to drink fluids, don’t drive, and look for signs of blood in my stool. Not to worry, I thought smugly, I don’t have one stool in my entire house. The nurse came back in and I showed her my release sheet, which included four very nice pictures of the inside of my colon. Look, I said, they’re all arranged like pictures from a Woolworth’s booth. She smiled nicely, obviously humoring the slightly drugged patient, and obviously too young to have ever heard of, much less been in, a Woolworth’s. I tried again. This picture looks like punctuation I told her. She looked at the photo is question. See, I said, it’s just part of a colon. A semi-colon. She actually stifled a titter and hurried out. Like I said before, one laugh in that room and all hilarity would break loose. Darn tootin’, I called after her. Finally, they told me I could get dressed and led me into the room to meet my driver. She asked how things went, any special instructions, and I said yes, the doc said for the next hour I would be subject to explosive flatulence so stay away from open flames. That did it, my nurse and the receptionist, the only other people in the room, stared giggling till tears came to their eyes. I left smiling. I’d finally gotten the staff to lighten up. When I got home, I looked again at the recovery instruction sheet. I noted that the doctor was called a gastro–enter-ologist. Hmm, I thought, enter-ologist is right but I’d drop the Gastro. And worse, the recovery sheet had the oddest title. I mean, considering I was looking for unsightly drippage from the area of exploration. It said, “Discharge Instructions.” Eeww. I hope that takes care of itself.
America ya gotta love it.