Probing the Mysteries

The wondrous origins of life have long been debated. Was life manufactured by a Loving, Purposeful Designer (Creationism), or did life emerge from a Tiresomely Sluggish, Eons-Long Series of Hollering, Arm-Waving, Self-Correcting Accidents (Evolutionary Darwinism)? These positions would seem to be mutually exclusive, yet there are skittish wafflers (with all due respect) unwilling to commit. And so we have a third theory called Theistic Evolution. To my limited intellect this is on a par with Vegan Beef. The topic surely merits a future overwritten column. 

This much is inarguable: whether created or evolved, the human body’s miraculous insides are a jelly-packed collection of crazy-looking tubes, filters, and bags that appear to have been poured down the open neck in haste. The large intestine looks like a radiator hose tossed carelessly over a clothesline, the liver drapes itself over the stomach like a sentimental drunk, and the heart – metaphorical engine of humankind’s indomitable spirit – nestles sloppily between the lungs like a lumpen spitball launched through a straw in 2nd period algebra. The repulsive-looking pancreas is stuck randomly into the gutworks like a Mr. Potato Head afterthought. Miracle? It’s a miracle this macabre junk drawer even works. 

But it does, marvelously, and it underwrites our every human whimsy.

The Right Shoes

You will deliberate for a solid hour over the purchase of a wristwatch, leaning over the glass case with furrowed brow. You will spend an entire afternoon selecting the perfect shirt-trouser-and-shoe combination, toting the goods jauntily to your car with a bounce in your step, touchingly alive with the anticipation of leveraging the attractive new stuff in social transactions whose tribal nuances rival the complexities of the spleen. We’re a complex and sublime animal.

Underneath it all, though, your “person” exists at the pleasure of this other thing – your body; a mysteriously animate, warmth-radiating contraption, insanely complex and in need of frequent maintenance. The human body has not been overpraised. It is a marvel in whose majesty one may truly revel. Until you receive something in the mail that reminds you it needs to be raised on a hydraulic jack and its delicate undercarriage intimately probed by a professional stranger. 

So it was that I recently reported to the garage to have my Exhaust Manifold inspected. The technicians call this a colonoscopy, and it deflates the Majesty thing in a jiffy.

Spelunking Without a Helmet

A colonoscopy, recommended as a pre-emptive procedure for persons of a certain age, is the exploratory spelunking of the large intestine by a photographer wearing a smock. We don’t want things growing in there that can eventually harm us, and so it is periodically necessary to enlist a helpful professional to have a look. Cellular life is opportunistic, to our generally good fortune. It always means well, but sometimes it will excitedly effloresce under less-than-optimal circumstances and need to be dealt with. The colonoscopy procedure is surprisingly quick and is not in the least bit uncomfortable, honestly. Unless one’s pride has nerve endings. 

High Pressure Magic

On the Courageous Medical Specialist continuum, the gastroenterologist is to medicine what the Mercury-era astronaut was to space exploration; a brave Magellan of the nether regions. But bravery isn’t foolishness. This medical specialist insists on a completely empty large intestine for the procedure – understandable since Gastroenterologist Fashion Sense runs to brilliant white garb.

No problem! In their wisdom the colonic engineers have devised a fiendish catalyst to get things moving the evening prior, so that on the day of the procedure no posterior geyser will threaten the good doctor’s sartorial austerity. There are a couple or three different colon-voiding elixirs on the market, and the one prescribed for my adventure is called MoviPrep^®, which sounds like putting on a necktie to go see a matinee. It isn’t that.

Within an hour of drinking the solution (as reliably reported on the box), the magic potion chemically tricks the colon into believing it is the ass-end of an F-16. A nightlong series of delightful spasms ensues, yesterday’s benign ham sandwich now exiting in a weaponized blast that could tear old chewing gum off a city sidewalk. I spend the evening making the Betty Boop face. “Boop-Oop-a-Doop!!”

No Exit

The next day I report to the clinic with my ex-girlfriend (wife). The procedure offers the jittery patient an optional relaxant, and so it’s recommended one arrange a ride home – lest the doped-up customer stagger out of the clinic to blearily wander the streets with his pants around his ankles, singing the Andy Williams songbook and gesturing like a tenor. I’d had my four wisdom teeth out as a tween, an IV drip in my forearm. I’d awakened to the lilting laughter of the dental assistant, who informed me that as I counted backwards I’d started blathering about Farrah Fawcett-Majors. True story (and yeah, this dates me). I decline the colonoscopy relaxant. 

My appointment is at 7 in the morning. Entering the colonoscopy waiting room at that hour is like wandering into the middle of a French existentialist play. A gaggle of gloomy men and women sit with unread magazines drooped into their laps, each of them staring bug-eyed into an abyss of their own design. I barely have time to sign in when a cheery clinic interlocuter appears at the door. “Jeffry Wing?!” She surveys the expressionless damned in their seats and I do the same. Surely he’s here somewhere? My beloved jostles my arm and I fess up. “Follow me!” my attendant chirps. When I crane my neck to bid my ex-gf farewell she is already halfway out the door. “Bye sweetie!” she calls with her predictably mirthful smile.

Ambassador

We all know by now that the jocularity of the medical attendant rises in concordance with the gravity of the procedure. So it is that people are wheeled into brain surgery attended by mimes and dancing bears in tutus. One is reminded of the movie Patch Adams, in which Robin Williams plays a doctor who delivers himself of dire diagnoses wearing a clown’s nose. Is this a good idea? Sartre would surely have approved.

But the nice lady who takes me by the arm is genuinely laconic, and a dear. She understands the rueful comedy implicit in the colonoscopy and her genuine high spirits enjoin me to see the harmless bigger picture. I begin to calm a little, and everything happens now in fairly short order. We repair to a little room with dressing cubicles and their flimsily translucent “privacy” curtains. I’m given a one-piece shift of pale blue hospital-issue cotton. I stare at it for a long moment. 

“Pull it down over your head,” my keeper instructs helpfully, seeing my paralysis. “I’m naked underneath?” I ask. “Uh, YEAH?” she replies in her best “duh!” I can’t help but smile. The smile fades as she interviews me about the nature of the previous evening’s exhaust. “Could you see through it?” she asks. “Uh…um…maybe…a little?” She jots something on her clipboard. 

I shakily doff my clothes and stuff them into a locker, move to an adjoining room. Another middle-aged guy in a tunic is sitting there and we exchange nervous pleasantries about our respective professions. To my chagrin he works in pumped concrete. My bowel stirs.

A woman arrives dressed in business casual and leads me to the Procedure Room. She is likewise relaxed and relaxing. “Here is the Procedure Room,” she says as we enter. My original attendant arrives and to my horror conveys my information in dulcet tones. “HE COULDN’T SEE ALL THE WAY THROUGH HIS CRAP,” she remarks loudly. Another patient passes us, a nervous-looking woman in her own pale blue tunic. “Oh no,” I manage. “We wore the same outfit.” She stares through me with a haunted expression, offers a wan smile, and walks on.

Pat Boone Bowel

The Procedure Room! There are countertops and stainless-steel sinks and dangling apparatus, all bathed in that shadeless Western Medicine fluorescence whose chief effect is to shout “Mortality!” I’m bade lie down on the gurney next to the wall and the handsome lady fluffs the pillow. “Are you comfortable, Jeff?” I’m intrigued by these niceties, preceding as they do the introduction of a camera-festooned freight train into my harshly illuminated yoo-hoo. 

Following instructions, I roll onto my left side. A photograph of a bright yellow bird has been taped to the wall. “Comfort Bird,” I murmur sardonically. Momentarily I’ll be glaring beseechingly at Comfort Bird as at a long-lost lover. 

Another professional enters the Procedure Room, snapping her gloves on like a movie surgeon. She pleasantly tells me her name and says she’ll be assisting the doctor. The idea of bearing my caboose to this small crowd has me all a-twitter. It’s not clear what could be more humiliating. Maybe some arcane procedure involving my urethra and a sparkler.

The doctor arrives, handsome and of good cheer. “How we doing? You’re going to feel a little pressure.” Swell. With doctors it’s always “a little pressure” or “a little pinch.” They could be cleaving your breastbone with a circular saw. 

I’m spiffy-lubed and the totemic object of my terror enters my storm cellar without ceremony. I fear the camera will catch an inscription on the wall of my bowel, a message from Arne Saknussemm, the mysterious Icelandic explorer whose cryptic subterranean scrawls are described in Jules Verne’s novel Journey to the Center of the Earth. This would mean the film version’s Pat Boone is wandering around my colon with a torch and no shirt. Not good.

Fifteen minutes later the utterly painless procedure is over. I’m clean! I did it! It’s over! It was nothing! I gamely thank everyone and walk to the recovery room where I crack wise with the nurse there. She hands me several stapled sheets featuring garish color photos of my gastronomic soul and I shut up.

This has been a PSA, dear reader. If you’ve been putting off this procedure, you needn’t. It’s a piece of cake, for real. Given the context, I do realize this well-meant assurance could wreck your love of cake.