The Proof Is In The … Colonoscopy

If you’ll allow a trip down a road less traveled, the Ol’ Bogeyman would like to share a personal experience. He does so for two reasons. 

One, to dispel fears or misconceptions of my fellow human beings, many of whom have reservations about undergoing a procedure we all should embrace, and for all the children to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace. 

That said, in the name of transparency, Ol’ Bogey does present this narrative with a more selfish point to prove.

As we go through this life, we tend to avoid certain things. And most of those things have to do with dentists, government agencies and hummus - not necessarily in that order. 

If making an appointment is required, if the engagement results in someone sticking us with, or sticking something to us, we out it in the personal planner junk drawer, next to safety inspections, paint swatches and complimentary calendars.

But, due to recent changes and insurance requirements, the Bogeyman had to make arrangements for an annual checkup. You know, the checkup you annually skip, the one where you have to lie about your alcohol consumption, exercise habits, diet and anything else that reflects poorly on your life choices.

Truth is, Ol’ Bogey is a firm believer in the aphorism, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” In other words, he’s here, still standing, hasn’t been killed and  therefore, he must be strong as an ox. A trip to a physician can only pull back the curtain on that otherwise scientifically sound tenet.

The last thing you want is some doctor poking around. The next thing you know, you’re hearing the dreaded “C” word. No, not that “C” word, the other “C” word, the one with five syllables. That’s right - “Colonoscopy.”    

Actually, a colon exam is not like the oil-change sticker on your windshield, or the email about a large wire transfer from a foreign bank account. That is, you can’t ignore it. As you get older, you realize certain things in life are just inescapable - joint pain, property tax and Bart Inman commercials. 

And unfortunately, just as sure as you’re going to need a bathroom, you need a colonoscopy every few years.

Perhaps you recall back in 2000 when NBC TODAY show’s Katie Couric blazed a media trail by televising her colonoscopy. More recently, talk show host Jimmy Kimmel did the same, with Couric alongside for encouragement. Supposedly, these programs inspired many to have the procedure done. 

They had the opposite effect on this savvy colon owner.  Just sayin,’ there’s some things most people could go his entire life without seeing on a 65-inch high definition television screen - John Daly in a Speedo, Roseanne Barr rolling out of bed in the morning - and a closeup of someone’s internal septic system ranks right up there.

Still, inspired or not, chickens eventually come home to roost, even chickens to have their colon probed. Even the most radical colonoscopy-denier has to take his lumps, or at least, have them removed.

So when O’l Bogey relented, friends and family were quick to comfort and support. They insisted the devil was actually in the day before - the prep work. There’s no eating or drinking of anything ut clear liquids on the eve of the procedure. Rather, you either take some pills or guzzle some chalky solution to trip the sump pump and clean out your system. As we say around the colonoscopy office cooler, “Bottom’s up!” 

If you’ve tossed down a “Slinger” in the wee hours of a long, overzealous night, you know the drill. What happens next is the old “Porcelain Parade,” “Flush Limbaugh,” or “Running On Empty.” 

Anyway, when the prep is over, when the colon is tapped out, it’s splunkin’ time.

This nervous colonoscopatient arrived for the procedure at St. Luke’s Hospital. There were lots of sports fans on the hospital staff. The nurse practitioner was a Blues fan, bemoaning the fact her team seems incapable of winning three in a row.

“Oh well,” O’l Bogey chimed in. “You know how it goes: you win some … you win some, you lose some.” 

To repeat, he was nervous.

The anesthesiologist came into the room and he was a baseball fan. He remarked how he had been able to finagle tickets to a Cards-Cubs game last summer. “Wow, those are hard to come by,” Bogey offered. “You must have really pulled those out of your colon.” 

A little internal medicine humor.

As he set things up, the bemused anesthesia saucer assured the increasingly obtuse patient that there was nothing to worry about. “Just relax,” he said, “You’ll go to sleep and when you wake up, it’ll be over. You won’t remember a thing,”

“Kind of like last season, eh?” Bogey added.

At that point, the head colonoscoper himself arrived, gastroenterologist Dr. Andrew Y. Su. Knowing  Johnny Cash recorded a song about this boy immediately put me more at ease. When Su learned Ol’ Bogey had been a sports scribe for the local rag, he admitted, “I hardly ever see the newspaper anymore, get most of his info online. 

That was perfectly fine with the Bogeyman, who preferred that the person preparing to guide a probe through his nether regions know his way around a computer mouse. The good doctor explained he’d be looking for polyps in the colon, which he would then remove.

“That’s one way to fight writer’s block, ay?” the Bogeyman offered.

Crickets.

Su explained he had performed colonoscopies on a number of media personalities and it had been his experience that members of the media were not especially prone to have colon polyps. 

“Really?” Bogey remarked. “Are you sure they were showing you their colon, or was it a hole in the ground? A lot of them can’t tell the difference.”

The anesthesia was kicking in and Ol’ Bogey was rolling. 

“I gotta tell you, Doc, you’re wastin’ your time checking my colon. To be honest, I use the semicolon a lot more often. 

“By the way,  did you ever have the occasion to examine Mike Shannon, or Yogi Berra or Casey Stengel. Don’t know about polyps, but you probably found quite a few malapolyps in there.

The lights were fading, Bogey was fading, but he pressed on: “Hey Doc, what does a Parrot with a speech impediment say? 

“ ‘Polyp wanna cracker?’ ”

The curtain closed. 

After that, things got a  little fuzzy. The sedated scribe remembers having a weird dream. He was covering the Pebble Beach Pro Am tournament and Colin Montgomerie was leading … playing in a group with Colin Powell, Colin Kaeperknick and Colin Farrell … and then there was a baseball dinner honoring Bortolo Colon and Oscopy Smith … and then Tiny Tim was playing a ukulele, dancing through Meramec Caverns and singing Tiptoe Through The Polyps … and finally, the picture dissolved in a sinister closeup of Dr. Su, laughing wickedly like Vincent Price in Michael Jackson’s Thriller video …

And then ... he woke up, in the recovery room. The whole thing was over. Nothin’ to it, sports fans.

And as the anesthetic slowly wore off, the Bogeyman was informed he was polyp-free. He would be placed on the “10-year plan,” the same program he had been on at the University of Missouri. 

The staff even provided photographs of his unobstructed colon, to place on the fridge, next to the grandkids. 

Most importantly - to the aforementioned point of this story - the pictures of an unobstructed colon provide indisputable proof to many readers who have suggested otherwise.

That is, as the photos clearly show, Ol’ Bogey’s head is not stuck there.