Gasconade County Republican

There are any number of medical examinations, tests and procedures that while well intended manage in the process to strip the victim, er…I mean the patient, of any vestige of dignity.

For some men that might include “turn your head and cough,” while a stranger  holds very private parts of your body in his or her hands. For some women it might be the instructions to “please place your feet in the stirrups.” At least one medical procedure, however, ignores gender while efficiently removing any trace of the dignity you unintentionally abandoned at the front door.

We’re talking colonoscopies here, a procedure that examines, from the inside, all 5 to 6 feet of your colon. This is accomplished with a flexible fiber-optic instrument that can make all the turns it encounters on its journey as well as take stunning, four-color photographs of what it finds. In addition to the tiny camera, it must also include a tiny pair of scissors for snipping off any polyps the camera discovers.

The procedure itself is relatively painless because the victim, er…patient, is given a mild sedative before it starts. Personally, I didn’t find anything mild about the sedative in my previous experiences with colonoscopies. I was out cold for most of it. But it isn’t the actual procedure that is most memorable. It’s the preparation.

For the tiny camera to take unobstructed photographs of the inside of the colon, the colon itself must be empty, void of any and all material that would normally be found in some stage of digestion along its 5-foot-plus length. Not partially empty either: when they say empty, they mean empty.

This is accomplished through a starvation process that begins the day before the scheduled procedure which, by the way, is always scheduled for O’ dark-thirty. Food, if it can be called that, consists of only clear liquids, broth, Jell-O, popsicles, gourmet delights like that. A lot of people assume that diet the day before is enough to make sure their colons are void of substantial materials. The people who assume that are fools.

About 4 p.m., the day before the procedure, you are instructed to mix up and drink a vile concoction. This is followed by more mixing and more drinking throughout the evening. Some instructions say drink a liter of water with the witches brew you are stirring up. I’ve always had problems converting metric measurements to English, but in this case a liter really means 10 gallons. Let there be nothing between you and the bathroom where you will spend the rest of your life. Be sure there is plentiful reading material handily located within easy reach because you will not be moving around. I read Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” again before my first colonoscopy.

That first one was a breeze, relatively speaking. Because the instructions explicitly say in 30-point, boldface type “Do not eat or drink ANYTHING after midnight” the night before the procedure, I was starved and in need of coffee when they turned me loose that morning. After a hearty breakfast and several cups of coffee, I went to the office. The second one was a little different although the starvation and caffeine withdrawals were present. I managed to eat little of the hearty breakfast I had ordered and maybe a half cup of coffee. Instead of going to the office, I went home and was sick as the proverbial dog for the rest of the day.

Because of that experience as well as the other unpleasantness associated with colonoscopies, I skipped the recommended repeat procedure the following year and for the next three years thereafter. An observant doctor recently noticed that, however, and suggested (insisted) that it was time for another of those lovely experiences. Somehow, I let myself be talked into it and I am now stocking the bathroom with the unabridged works of Ernest Hemingway.

A lot of jokes have been written about colonoscopies, mostly be men and more than likely several days after they went through the procedure. A doctor who performs the procedure and collects comments from his predominately male patients said his all time favorite was: “Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there.”

Personally, I like the one where the patient, just before the “mild” sedative took effect, reportedly said: “Hey, Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.”