Sigmoidoscopy
Life in reverse, as it were, is the essence of the gastroenterologist’s m.o. : where the average doctor’s examination begins with the innocent statement, “Open up, and say ‘Aahh’”, the gastro doc says, rather ominously, “Roll over, and try not to squirm”.
Gastro as a word holds some meaning for foodies: gastronome, gastronomique, gastro-pub. It is a word, in short, that gives grandeur and a very French je ne sais quoi to the proceedings of any culinary event. And as things would be, so the word also lends velour to the natural course of great meals, the proceedings of which are never too small, too difficult, and too expressive to ignore–at least on the personal level.
“Look, you’re constipated!” said the kind doctor who, just moments previously, had queried me on the book I was reading, Freya Stark’s The Southern Gates of Arabia. “There’s something,” she said, “compelling about that title…now please sign here, there’s only a minute–minute–chance of a puncture.” The assisting nurse then walked in, checked the paperwork I had just signed (and read first), and then said, “isn’t he here just for a flexible sigmoidoscopy, not the full deal?” My doctor flushed, as did I, and we co-initialed the changes to the document with mutual murmurs of separately embarrassed apology.
This is a tale of terminals: time spent in tropical areas with variable water quality tends to have one visit more than one doctor to assess equally variable, and apparently untraceable, symptoms. The travel doctor had finally identified the parasite lurking in my bladder; this spelunking doctor was hoping to detect the source of the minute amounts of blood in my stool which I had assured the travel doctor was not due to multiple forgotten instances of anal sex with men. “Are you sure you’re not gay?” he had asked me several times as non sequiturs throughout my initial visit with him, hoping to catch me off my guard. “You sure you didn’t have anal sex with any men while you were in East Africa?”
Which brought me to my present: looking at the screen placed conveniently within my view, I could indeed see some muck obstructing the view of what could only be described as a smooth, and surprising clean looking, tunnel. Here I was worried about bacon fat lining the walls: ha! This was the anti-Geiger corridor, all pinkish, healthy and not an alien rib in sight. Everything looked good, and even better after some generous spritzing of water and light gusts of air that spread the intestinal walls away from the offending muck. The doc skillfully pushed in and probed and my mind wandered somewhat while one my legs twitched spasmodically.
Earlier, in the narrow waiting lounge, a television was set to a channel that featured nothing but episodes involving cooks, kitchens, and a varying degree of annoying hosts and hostesses. At first, my book kept me busy: Stark was having a time going without her sugar in her tea, though more importantly her bedouin guides were treating her with respect and she was exploring a region of the Arabian peninsula few westerners had ever visited, let alone a single woman. I adjusted my double gown–one put on face forward, the other put on face backward, the two acting together to remove the threat of an unfortunate full moon rear and/or full frontal flashing.
Despite this, my eye caught the waiting lounge screen, and I was entranced by Bobby Flay, thunder and lightning throwdown cook, fighting to determine who could make the best friend green tomato BLT (he could, as it turned out, though the incumbent had invented this particular sandwich). Then, he took on the fried chicken mama, and lost (she deep fried her chicken in canola oil and a half pound of butter).
So, nothing too amiss with this picture: the North American watches the social fruits of his greater continental society. Yet as the chicken fried and the crowds sank their teeth into the succulent, moist, and buttermilk soaked and battered flesh of the lapin-like bird, several stomachs rumbled. All of us hospital-gowned folk sitting there in that lounge turned to and fro, silent with our thoughts of the preparation we had gone through to get to this point. For myself, it had been two days of a gentle laxative–well named Dulcolax–and a day of clear fluids. Nothing terrible but, still, the sight of all that steaming, butter and oil fried, chicken would have tempted even a vegetarian Jesus.
Fools do things their own way, and often they suffer for their ways. I had spent the morning hawking purple and white icing cupcakes to fund-raise for epilepsy awareness. Seeing that I was to be a patient at the same hospital that I am a volunteer, I had thought, why not double up and save myself two trips?
And thus the fate of the time conscious socially conscious. Few would highlight this procedure as fun; few would indeed dare even say that this was what they would do on their day off from work. Yet it is what I was doing, and happily so. Until the cakes were sold, and I was forced to watch Flay throwdowns, towering cakes being built (the winning team was the one that recreated the hanging gardens of Babylon), and then the exquisitely gross products of America’s heartland diners, life lacked some of the levity it so normally possesses.
