Go with the flow
As our 42 year old brother lay dying of bowel cancer, he put the hard word on us. “Go and get checked.”
“Nah, that’s a one way street,” Ben retorted. “I’m not havin’ anyone stick a camera up my bum. It’d be goin’ against the traffic.”
But a dying brother’s request that is in your own best interests, is next to impossible to deny. Ben had to eat his words and go get his first colonoscopy.
“Bottoms up,” Ben announced as he downed one small glass of Picolax. Within the hour, things started moving along nicely for him. He spent the evening dropping bombs then squirting the porcelain, even timing how long it would take for chewed carrot to move from his mouth to his anus. After just a few hours, he was feeling purged of the crap that had been weighing him down, clean as a whistle from top to bottom.
The next morning, Ben checked in at the hospital. A nurse showed him to his bed, told him that his procedure was scheduled for 11:30 am and handed him a theatre gown.
“A gown?” Ben’s eyes widened. “I’m not that kind of bloke.” But since she asked nicely, and Ben figured that he would be dead by lunchtime, he took off his undies and put on the backless dress. It was a bit breezy around his butt and hard to keep his gown closed so he gave up as he walked down the hallway. Thinking about it, Ben reasoned that a hospital is probably the only place in Australia where you can flash your bum at others without getting arrested so he went for a long walk - around the ward, upstairs to oncology,and then down to the back entrance.
Ben still had a bit of time to kill and, feeling slightly pooped from the fasting, he decided to head back to the ward and have a kip. But as Ben was dozing off, he started babbling out loud about a garden hose breaking and entering his house through his backyard. A nurse soon appeared and pulled his head out of these dark thoughts with pre-op medication. Within a few minutes, Ben was asleep with a smile on his face.
Within an hour, Ben was back from theatre, with no recollection of anything and no discomfort whatsoever. On discharge, he even got something akin to a gift certificate - twelve glossy photos of his colon and intestines!
“These photos are great,” Ben announced. “I can hold them up to other cars while waiting at traffic lights and moon people without even pulling my pants down!” He made having a colonoscopy look like fun.
I decided to delay getting a colonoscopy until I was back at work in Japan. I expected it would be much the same as Australia and, after Ben’s experience, kind of looked forward to it.
After I got the kids off to school, I rode my bicycle about 3 km to a hospital that performs a lot of colonoscopies. While the hospital was crammed between a highway entrance and a busy road full of trucks, they did have bicycle racks for patients. The four-storey building was looking worn and due for demolition, but it was busy. With my limited language skills, I asked the receptionist where to go to check my large intestine. She kindly wrote the correct term for colonoscopy 結腸内視鏡検査 on a piece of paper and directed me down the corridor to a room for day patients. Another nurse confirmed my booking and I was assigned bed number 4.
Like my brother in Australia, I was given the ‘backless dress’ to wear for the procedure. Unlike Ben, who was cleared out with one, small lemon drink, I had to spend the morning sitting on bed 4, downing two litres of ceiling plaster. I tried to make pleasant conversation with my fellow inmates who were also struggling with the mandated drinking binge. “乾杯” (cheers). I raised my glass to toast our efforts. I tried to build some team spirit amongst us but my roomies seemed resigned to being in the dumps. Little did I know why.
The white glug slowly pushed its way through my intestines and sent me trotting down the hallway to the toilets frequently. As I’d been living in Japan for a few years already, I was well-aware of the national obsession with poo. Nature documentaries, poo-shaped key-rings, toys and ice-creams, children’s TV shows and books, everyone enjoys talking about “unko.” They even have a Poo Museum in Tokyo - no shit! Given this national obsession, I was not surprised that the nurse told me not to flush until I had shown her my bowel movements every time. In a newer hospital, with western-style toilets that have water in the bottom, this would have been difficult but, as I was in an old hospital with squat toilets, every big job I produced sat on the dry ceramic bowl until flushed.
The nurse was a bit hard to please. Even when I thought I’d get the all clear, she’d look in the bowl, see the tiniest bit of faecal matter and say “‘もう少し飲んで下さい.” (Please drink a little more.)
Finally I passed and the nurse instructed me to walk down to the room for colonoscopies and wait outside. After around 40 minutes, it was my turn. I got settled in the inspection chair and looked around. This purpose-built room was kind of like a dentist’s chair in a car mechanic’s workshop. The chair had some sort of drop down flap around my butt, a hose to explore and pump air into my intestines, and another hose to wash down the work area into the drain on the floor. Above my right arm rest there was a TV screen which was connected to the camera that was about to enter my butt. At this point, I expected to be given some kind of sedative or pain relief but there was none. Instead, the air pump started blowing me up until my belly felt set to explode.
“Ittai, ittai!” I gasped but the doctor seemed somewhat indifferent to my cries of pain. I guess he had another 8 holes to go before lunch and didn’t want to be slowed down. He mumbled something about it all being over so soon that pain relief was a waste of time. I begged to differ but I was in no position to argue. The chair was leaning way back with my head lower than my butt. The chair seat had been folded down so the colonoscopist had easy access and there was a long hose inside my colon. All I could do was pant, as one does when delivering a baby.
But breathing wasn’t enough to block out the pain so I tried self brain-washing.
“I’m on the beach,” I told myself. “The sun is shining, the waves are washing into the rock pools. The wind is blowing gently.”
“No you’re not! You’re trapped in a chair about to explode,” my belly bellowed.
“You are experiencing something new and amazing,” my frontal lobe challenged. “So few people ever have this opportunity to really see what they are made of, who they really are on the inside. Cherish this opportunity.”
This positive thinking helped for a bit. As the camera wove its way through more than a metre of my intestinal tract. I focused on watching the TV screen and pretending I was exploring a long, dark cave, searching for treasure. As the camera started heading back, a bright light was visible in the distance.What’s that? I wondered. Am I dead and about to enter the gates of heaven? But the TV screen went black just as I was approaching the light.
“はい、以上です,” (You’re done) the colonoscopist announced as he pulled the last bit of hose out of my butt, and returned the purpose-built colonoscopy chair to a sitting position. I climbed off the chair, thanked the doctor and carried my bloated belly back to bed number 4.
Following the nurse’s demonstration, I climbed onto my bed and assumed a praying to Mecca type position, with my butt high in the air.
“おならしてください,” (please fart) she said encouragingly. But, with three room-mates watching and no curtains for privacy, I was too embarrassed to let fly with my farts.
As I remained in the praying position, my head was starting to spin. What was the light? Had I really been given a glimpse of the afterlife? If I’d died and come back to life, why were the medical staff so nonchalant? Eventually, it dawned on me. The light at the end of the tunnel was the world and I had seen it through my own anus.
After an hour of failing to fart, the hospital agreed to discharge me anyway. My 3 km bike ride home was jet-propelled. Perhaps people noticed the air stream behind me or the ridiculous grin I had on my face as my whole body celebrated pushing out all that hot air. I imagine I looked like a blown up balloon flying around as it deflated. I was home in record time and online to my brother.
“You know those photos you use to moon people from your car window at the traffic lights? Well, I reckon I’m one up on you. I was fully conscious throughout my colonoscopy and watched a live performance of the explorations of my inner self. I reckon I could start a new cult of bowel cleansing retreats. I could become a guru who has literally seen the light at the end of the tunnel … “
‘You’re full of shit,” Ben reminded me.