Friday, December 04, 2009

Green Marmot Vexed By An Hundred Sandwich

One of the most interesting things you will ever go through is a colonoscopy, although this is hearsay since I went through mine passed out cold. From what I am told, I woke up midway through the procedure (I have no conscious memory of this whatsoever) facing the monitor where the drama of my lower intestinal tract was showing and loudly exclaimed 'Is that me? Oh wow! That is so cool!' and then fell back asleep. Now I wish I'd been awake enough to remember just what it is I saw that was so interesting. It could have been Amelia Earhart. I'll never know.

As it turns out I have four diverticules. A diverticule is a pocket-like rupture in the tissue of the intestinal lining.

OK fine. You know those big innertubes you use for river rafting, and how they'll get a weak place in the rubber and get this big weird bulgy part that bloops out? That's a diverticule. Or it would be if it were a colon.  So what we should all take away from that analogy* is not to ever use your colon as a form of alternative watercraft.  Of course if you go 'tubing you should bring your colon along; your colon wants to have fun too, but I mean just use the innertube for rafting because that's what it's for. If in the interim you should have cause to use your colon, then for the love of Pete go ashore. It would be gross if you just stayed there floating down the river in your innertube grunting out a dump. Instead, do like we did back when I was a kid in Oregon:  crap in the front seat of someones' car. (Some moron always forgets and leaves their window rolled down.)  It's a hell of a lot more convenient than duckwalking up and down the bank all bent over looking for a restroom since most rivers don't have them. The river will still be there when you get back.

I am given to understand that the major cause of diverticules is too much red meat in the diet, which simply doesn't apply in my case at all. Now as a child of the 60's and 70's of course I ate more than my share of cow, but in my case it had been pressure cooked for three hours beforehand. The result was best described as slippery. I don't see how it could have massed up enough to blow out the colon of a vole, let alone a person. Still, the fact remains. And there's photographic proof.

Oh yes!

I was offered copies of these Polaroids, in fact. Now honest to snot, what the hell would you do with something like that? Send them out as Christmas cards? Which now that I come to think about it I wish I had. They were kind of Christmassy. You know, all red and shiny and kind of....red, and stuff.

Insides are really red, too. I mean, REALLY RED. I figured they would be pale pink. You remember those medical books with the layered transparencies and how the upper intestinal tract was pink and the lower was a tasteful sort of muted puce? Those are wrong. It's red.

When you get a colonoscopy the first thing they do after they pump you full of anaesthetic and you say a bunch of stupid shit that you think is really funny but probably isn't and then pass out, is they take an air hose and pump a couple of blasts of air up there to inflate things. I was kind of appalled at how much inflation they can get by doing that. Jesus CHRIST. Take it from me, if they were feeling frisky they could pack a lot of stuff up there and you'd never have a clue as long as it was stuff like old rubber gloves or margarine. You could probably walk around all damn day just humming a lil' tune and never notice a thing until you took a crap, and then you'd probably scream.

Anyway, once that's done they take that hose out and then stick another different hose up there that has a fiber optic camera in it. It has a little headlight on it too; and what it lights up is shore nuff red, like I've been saying. Shiny, too. And there's all these little red spidery veins all over the place. I was expecting something that looked like raw chitlins. In reality it looks nothing whatsoever like raw chitlins. That didn't bother me as much as you might think it would.

Before all this takes place though you have to drink this liquid laxative called citrate of Manitoba for two days. Man does this stuff clean you out. Much to my surprise it tasted pretty good. Kind of like Squirt soda, appropriately enough. Basically, you should plan on just taking your pants off altogether and sitting on the toilet for that entire couple of days while this stuff does its job since as soon as it goes in, it comes RIGHT OUT. At VELOCITY. And it ain't over 'till the fat lady sings...or in this case, 'till the fat lady shits clear for at least an hour. And the fat lady did. Hell, the fat lady about fucking took the shine off the enamel.

Besides diverticules I had a couple of polyps. This pleased a certain vile, Lovecraftian part of my psyche: Ewwwww polyyyyyypsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

It sounds like something with tentacles and slime that barfs up corrosive acid like those gross deep sea fish that glow in the dark and sneak around at night and lick your steering wheel and go 'wghnnnnn' because they're mutated.  And if you have to have something potentially life-threatening growing in your butt it might as well be something with a cool disgusting name, like 'polyps' instead of something with a lame boring name, like 'toaster'. Think how humiliating it would be to read 'Cause of death attributed to ass toasters' on your death certificate.

Intestinal polyps supposedly can turn into colon cancer. I have no idea how this happens or why. If it were an infestation of things with tentacles and slime that barfs up corrosive acid you could appease them with blood sacrifices, but it's not, which is why they have to inflate your butt and stick a camera up it. Life is a mystery. In any event they stuck ANOTHER thing up there that had an electrified cautery thing and lassoed the polyps and sent a charge through and the polyps went 'PFFFT'. I can't say I was displeased at all. When you consider the fact that this completely obviates the need at some future date to remove several yards of colon, sew your anus shut, and cut a hole in your side so you can shit in a bag, you got to figure you don't have a whole lot to bitch about. The disgusting practical joke potential is, of course, astronomical; but I'll shit in that bag when I come to it.

This procedure takes about an hour, all told. Now that you are finished, when you wake up  you'll know three things immediately:
1.You are completely empty because not having eaten anything for 24 hours will do that to a person.
2. But now, thanks to modern medical science and a small compressor, all that unused storage space now contains the cubic air mass of a military weather balloon and it smells like vaporized ass growths; therefore
3. You are now primed to cut the fart of a lifetime.

And they encourage this!  The nurse who comes in to make sure you aren't dead actually tells you to try as hard as you can to rip ass!  Oh yes! And as soon as you do...for a good two minutes, like five draft horses, a trumpeting bull elephant, plus another elephant that's dead and all bloated up like how they get but then someone threw a rock at it so now it's deflating out this jet of green dead elephant fumes...omg, you will be SO PROUD.  Everybody in the whole building will now know exactly what kind of a procedure you just had, too.  The human body is a miraculous thing, kids.

26 comments:

  1. I am rather taken with the idea of taking a big steaming dump in someones front seat and then srenely floating off down the river on my inflated colon . Now that sounds like a great day out.
    I think you should have those polariods blown up , poster sized , framed and strategically hung around your house , it would make an interesting talking point when you have guests.
    I am mailing my spare innertube puncture kit , we will soon have those divertiwhatsits patched up

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  2. if in the interim you should have cause to use your colon, then for the love of Pete go ashore. It would be gross if you just stayed there floating down the river grunting out a dump.

    Everybody out of the pool!

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  3. I laughed so hard I have tears leaking out of my eyeballs!!!! ;-D

    I had this done earlier this year too... If I woke up and yelled something, they didn't tell me. But I got a cute little note from the doc saying "Ms. A******n, your colon is normal."

    Mine's all red and shiny too, but minus the diverticuli and polyps. Don't need no deep sea mutant fish goobers in my guts, thanks very much.

    I hear ya on the farts... Can't say I ever had a two minute long ripper ever before in my life!

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  4. Thank you. I adore you.
    Would it, I wonder, be more a case of a colonoscopy going through you than you going through it?
    And please, please can I have one of those christmas cards?

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  5. This post is Teh Awesome! I like Beast's idea, except you should take the blown up polaroids and do a guerrilla art installation down in Lynden with 'em.

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  6. I have pictures also with which to frighten guests, I slept through most of it and they must have removed the gas before I woke up because I heard and smelled nothing. The thing about polyps and diverticula and stuff? If you got wrinkles and/or lumps on the outside......

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  7. Anonymous7:53 AM

    Reading intestines is out of fashion since the end of the Roman Empire, I thought. But in some areas of the Western world people enjoy having a look inside their innards, joyfully plunging into their own mesentery, a baroque lust for wobbling flesh pumping veins pulsating tissue, the grinning skull of the holy cadaver greets friendly. Today a glasfibre worm finds his way through the meat heir to the oldfashioned sizzling snake ... ah vanitas

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  8. Beast: We were a tough group out there at HighRocks in Gladstone. anyone stupid enough or stoned enough to leave the window rolled down could usually count on finding a nice 'present' in the front seat. sometimes it was a dead eel or a bag of picnic trash. and sometimes it was 'home made.' *opens envelope, throws away rubber patches, sniffs glue*

    mj: Oh Henry!

    ponita: wasn't it just amazing? if only we could call up that kind of firepower at will, huh? and congratulations on your normal colon!

    vicus: just for you, my darling, I will hunt up the printout and post it. anything to further the cause of improved british-american relations.

    xul: that idea has 'FirstNations' all over it. you've been reading this blog for way too long!! *trots off to the copy place*

    retro: seriously, what did you do with your pictures? i still have copies of the shots they took of the Bikers gastro esophogeal pictureotomy or whatever they call it. hell, I still have pictures of the Playboy of the Western Worlds rice-dispensing elbow baseball removal. I'm at a loss here! I mean, the possibilities are so limitless its like someone gave me a million dollar bill but nobody can change it!

    mago: But you know what? If they had actually used a real snake? THAT i would have stayed awake to see.

    Actually no, I'd be hiding in another country under an assumed name with an ass full of cancer. Who am I kidding.

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  9. I slept right thru my little butt adventure. but I did wake up cranky and hungry.

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  10. Anonymous8:11 AM

    IF you have enough internal pictures, make collage using them as pixels to make a huge picture of sumpin' sumpin'. I know you can do it. Kinda like making a quilt only more painful. Royce

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  11. They did an MRI on me for my heart surgery. While the MRI was the most mind-numbing thing in the ENTIRE world. (No moving, radio they pump through probably removed from your colon and into my ears, take nice deep breaths but don't fall asleep...) And then they showed me the pictures. Which was awesome. I am black and grey inside. And part of my aorta looked like someone had jammed their thumb in the tap. I could see my blood swooshin about. I didn't fart copiously though. As a nineteen year old girl that would have been the ultimate in humiliating.

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  12. I am also very taken with the exploding Polypsssssssssss . PFFFFFFT indeed , I would be hoping they give a little puff of green toxic gas as well .
    Had you talked me through the opperation before you went , I would have advised you to take a penny whistle or a recorder in with you , with this you could have played a merry tune with your bottom as the air dissapated

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  13. Noshit: How is it that your insides are black and grey and mine are red and lumpy? Could they have pumped your video feed through a tear in the fabric of time-space and run it through the 50's to save money or something?

    Beast: See, you're thinking 'Flight of the Bumblebee', right? I'm here to tell you it would have been 'The 1812 Overture' complete with rockets red glare and projectiles flying across the room and an intern across the ward with a pennywhistle embedded in their sternum. It was not beautiful OR 'propriate.

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  14. Royce: I'm still looking for the damnn things is the problem. But yeah, at least a nice new 'holiday themed' wallpaper for my monitor if nothing else.

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  15. I haven't had a colonoscopy but I have had 2 laproscopys (I think that's how you spell it). You don't get pictures of those though but you do get a general anaesthetic. First time they injected the GA they missed the vein and it was the most painful thing I've ever experienced, second time I had one, I lay on the bed thing in the anaesthetic room, said "this is waaay better than drugs" and then passed out.

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  16. Anonymous2:47 PM

    Moulages made from wax have a long history in Europe. There are some collections in Vienna, Amsterdam, dresden (but I am not sure) and of course in Italy - maybe this is interesting for you.

    I avoid such collections. I wittnessed some autopsies and, yeah - I have absolutely no interest in seeing the human body from within one more time.

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  17. HAHAHA phosphorescent citrate of manitoba HAHAHA!

    Just before my BFFF had his stroke, I drove him to the hospital to have his roto rootered.
    After listening to his gruesome testimony on the way home, I decided that the only roomful of people exploring my hiney on a 60 inch TV totally visible to all the pedestrian traffic in the hospital corridor, will be the hoity-toity coroners from CSI looking for traces of crack.

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  18. Didn't President Bush have some polypsss removed?

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  19. "Take it from me, you could stick a lot of stuff up there and never notice it unless it was square."

    I hope that's a figurative "take it from me," because I know you, and there is no way in hell I am going to take it from you.

    Well, maybe if I'm drunk.

    So, everything come out all right, then? What, no one else said it, so obviously I had to.

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  20. Anonymous3:16 PM

    I dont believe a word of it - honestly - its all too disgusting for words. I bet you are actually in a little bar somewhere drinking jack and smokin....

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  21. handrix: the deal is, those ARE drugs they give you. Thats the good stuff. And the government is CONSPIRING TO KEEP IT OUT OF OUR HANDS by conditioning us to associate it with hospitals and death and Dr. Chenard and getting pictures taken of the inside of our butts.

    Mago: I don't know whether to applaud your Paul-savvy link offering (oh man, I am SO THERE!! AWESOME!) or to be appalled on your behalf due to the whole 'seen one too many dead ass pancreaseses' issue. DAAAAANG.

    Mr. Morningwood: dude, then you gotta go on 'general anaesthetic day'. thats when they schedule all the shy ouch-cubes, put them behind closed doors and stick them on the back ward. Appropriately enough.

    Ratso: No, darling, you're mixed up. What happened was, Barack Obama removed an ass-polyp named George Bush from Americas collective rectum. Don't feel bad though; anyone could get mixed up like that. Have a daquiri.

    Fatty: bitch, you'll take it and like it. Now unwrap that margarine and SMILE.

    muttley: I'd have rather been out drinking jack and talking smack, true. With you. XX!

    EVERYONE: Well I looked for the goddamn things and I can't find them. I am not pleased. I know you're not pleased either. I promised you pictures of the inside of my ass and you got nothing but heartbreak. I suck. I do. And thats why you love me (muttley)

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  22. Anonymous10:37 AM

    "Mago: I don't know whether to applaud your Paul-savvy link offering (oh man, I am SO THERE!! AWESOME!) or to be appalled on your behalf due to the whole 'seen one too many dead ass pancreaseses' issue. DAAAAANG"

    I don't get it.
    1) Who or what is "paul-savvy"?
    2) What would/could appall you, why? I simply attented some autopsies and I don't do that anymore: The smell, the sounds, the colours ... that's why I avoid such collections.

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  23. well exactly. Paul savvy means 'appropriate to the author and venue'...you know what we like around here, which is 'sensitive wax portrayals of dead people with their guts hanging out'. 'Appall me' admittedly has no real meaning here and I apologize. I was trying to be cool.;)

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  24. Anonymous11:24 PM

    Yeah, gutts hanging. Out.

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  25. Ow. Ow ow ow. I'm laughing so hard I hurt.


    At least they did yours under general aneasthetic. Back in Michigan you are awake for the whole thing. Both my parents have had colonoscopies and it were miserable.

    As for the diverticulitis, have put you on a restrictive diet? My grandmother had it and couldn't eat anything with small seeds (strawberries, sesame rolls, etc) or they'd get stuck in the pockets and give her horrible abdominal pain. I hope you don't have to go on her diet. I know what a great foodie you are.

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  26. Yes, I too had it done a while ago, and woke up in a room with a half dozen others that also did, the place had some high velocity exhaust fans.

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