Being Prepared

I'm challenged.

Okay, well that's obvious. What I meant to say is I've been challenged, to write something as funny and clever as Dave Barry's legendary piece on his colonoscopy experience. Where's the level playing field. Has anyone everyone ever experienced anything as hilarious as a colonoscopy? In hindsight (pardon the term), at least.

I can't compete with Dave Barry on any level, but to try to top his colonoscopy column would be as impossible as sticking a scope up someone's ass and guiding it through miles of twisted colon. Well, more impossible, I suppose. A team of crack (again, pardon the term) medical professionals even managed to make their way through my colon, which was deemed to be "torturous." Just as dogs take on the personalities of their owners, so too, apparently, do our internal organs.

Barry's roll-on-the-floor funny piece was filled with cheap humor. Which is certainly not a bad thing. But how do I compete with cheeky (oops) observations such as the one he made about the preparation solution, which he noted should never get into the hands of our enemies. Or his description of the preparation solution: it tastes "like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon." I defy anyone who has been through the procedure to come up with a better one.

I was talking to a friend yesterday, and asked him if he had ever read the Dave Barry colonoscopy column. He had, and proceeded to share with me his experience with the prep. Apparently, he was not due back in town until late the night before the procedure, so he asked his wife to mix it up for him and have it ready in the refrigerator. When he arrived home, he obediently set to work drinking up the liter of what was supposed to taste like, well, shit. He was pleasantly surprised when the reputedly vile liquid tasted like lemonade. The good news in all this is that while he was chugging his kids' lemonade, at least they didn't drink the preparation solution.

My experience with colonoscopy was unfortunate only in the sense that I flunked the prep, which meant the guy who is still paying off medical school loans and spent years of rigorous and exhausting schooling and interning to get where he is today had to somehow finish up what I had failed to doo (no, that's not a typo). Kind of makes "grave digger" seem like an honorable profession.

One thing I'm sure of: Dave will not be able to compete with the piece I'll write about the mammogram I'm due for in a couple of months. Stay tuned.