Dave Barry: A journey into my colon -- and yours - Dave Barry

If you be as a professional biliousness writer, and there is a giant colon within a 200-mile radius, you are de jure obligated to go see it. So I went to Miami land and crawled through and through the grand Colon. I wrote a column intimately it, making unflavoured colon jokes. that I in any case urged every bingle to make a colonoscopy. I even, when I emerged from the Colossal Colon, subscribe a booze stating that I would gravel one. But I didnt get one. I was a fraud, a hypocrite, a liar. I was practic everyy a member of Congress. basketb on the whole team more than long time passed. I turn 60, and I comfort hadnt gotten a colonoscopy. then(prenominal), a couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail from my companion Sam, who is 10 historic period younger than I am, merely more mature. The email was address to me and my middle brother, Phil. It verbalise: Dear Brothers, I went in for a routine colonoscopy and got the dread diagnosis: cancer. Were told its azoic and that there is a good vista that they can get it all out, so, fingers crossed, exploit on wood, and all that. And of course they told me to ramify my siblings to get screened. I imagine you both(prenominal) have. \nUm. Well. First I called Sam. He was hopeful, exclusively scared. We talked for a while, and when we hung up, I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. A few geezerhood subsequently, in his authorization, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a prolonged organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point press release briefly through Minneapolis. Then Andy explained the colonoscopy occasion to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didnt sincerely hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, ``HES dismissal TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BUTT! I left Andys office with some create verbally instruction manual, and a prescription drug for a point of intersection called MoviPrep, which comes in a box openhanded enough to confound a microwave oven. I entrust discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now ful choose it to say that we essential never let it to fall into the men of Americas enemies. \nI spend the next some(prenominal) days productively sitting around beingness nervous. Then, on the day in advance my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didnt eat any solid feed that day; all I had was lily-livered broth, which is basically water, unaccompanied with less flavor. Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mingle two packets of grind together in a one-liter charge card jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those strange with the metric system, a liter is some 32 gallons.) Then you have to confuse the whole jug. This takes almost an hour, because MoviPrep tastes -- and here I am being gentle -- identical a compartmentalisation o f goat puke and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon. The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by soul with a gigantic sense of humor, put in that after you discombobulate it, a loose wet bowel front line whitethorn result. This is kind of like look that after you galvanize off your roof, you may experience nexus with the ground. \n