My Foray into the World of the Lower GI

Back when I was in my twenties, I was dating my future wife, Christine. Not only was she a strong, attractive, successful, smart woman, she also baked bread. I never had fresh bread before her. She insisted on making me a sandwich everyday. Tuna on fresh slices of wheat. Things were looking good, real good, until I started to have problems with my stomach.

Bread

Not to give away the ending to this story, but I didn't die. I went to my doctor complaining about the awful pains I was having in my gut. My doctor, back then, was a real jerk. He would sit at his desk with my medical record in front of him and ask,

"What am I seeing you for?"

I would always unload a smart ass, Will Hunting remark like,"dyspepsia" or "general malaise" or my favorite, "ptosis of the liver."

It used to chap my ass that all that documentation was right at his fingertips, and the dude didn't read past my name on the folder. I discovered that annoying your doctor is not a wise move. Sure they take the Hippocratic Oath and all, but they're also able to perform invasive procedures on you. It's not a good idea to irritate a person who can as a matter of profession stick something up your ass. Without examining me, my doctor announced,

"You need a lower GI."

"Whatever," I thought.

When I showed up for my foray into the world of the lower gastrointestinal tract, the nurse person looked at my paperwork then turned to me with an empathetic look, slightly more compassionate than if she had to tell me that I had the big C.

"What?" I asked.

"This one really sucks," she exclaimed.

Now I had already prepped for my lower GI. I didn't think anything could suck more than that. According to the instructions in preparation for my upcoming procedure, I had to get a "Fleet Enema Kit Number Two." Apart from the name sounding like the entire US Navy was going to take turns depth charging my garbage chute, it wasn't immediately obvious how unpleasant all this was going to be. I assumed that "Number Two" referred to, well, number two. The whole procedure involves a bag and a tube and some warm water as well as a bottle of nasty tasting fluid that will help you drop off some friends at the pool, except instead of pulling over to let them out, you're more like going to throw them out of a moving vehicle gangsta style. First mistake I made was not fully reading the directions that came with the kit which stated that I was supposed to dilute the bottle of fluid. Instead I unscrewed the safety cap and chugged it college style.

If you ever had to drink that stuff, you know it tastes like cheese that was stored at length under the cast on someone who broke his foot in a swamp. When I'm alone and I close my eyes and clear my head, the first memory which always come to mind is not my wedding day, not the birth of my children, not fond childhood memories. No, I recall the taste of that clear fluid I downed that day. After drinking the contents of the bottle, I was certain its role in this was to make you hurl so the food in you stomach doesn't even get a chance to gunk up your intestines. A short time later I discovered what that stuff really does.

If you don't know what I'm talking about then consider yourself lucky because once you go down the path of colon cleansing, you'll never think of your lower GI with the same fondness. Not to be graphic but that little bottle of clear fluid evacuated everything inside my body. Explosively. I crapped out everything I ate the night before and the day before that. When that was over, the warm water and tube (I'll leave it to your imagination where it goes) helped expunge stuff in which there was no way to tell how long was up there. I swear I knocked out some Milk Duds, and I haven't eaten them since third grade.

"Did you follow all the instructions?" the nurse person asked.

I wanted to ask her why her clothes didn't match. She was wearing a floral pattern against yellow with aqua pants. I began to suspect that being a wiseass got me into this mess in the first place so I told her,

"You mean the enema? Yeah, it cleaned out everything including my pride."

The nurse person had me change into that gown which you're supposed to tie behind your back, leaving your ass flapping in the wind, just in case any of your pride might still be in there. Medical professionals always make you wear that specific garment to assert their dominance over you. They say enthusiastically,

"Leave it open in the back!"

That way if you get out of line they can easily shove something in your ass while you're anesthetized. As if this procedure wasn't humiliating enough, they had me lay flat atop a cold table which contained the x-ray plates that capture the details of my lower GI tract. But before we got to that, I needed to get a bit of barium up into my intestines so my guts would show up on the x-ray. Unfortunately you don't drink the barium. A guy with a goatee in blue scrubs entered the room with a small bag of white fluid and a tube. The bag was smaller than the one that came with the US Navy Seal Team Two Underwater Demolition Enema Kit so I thought that this wasn't going to be all that bad after all. Following a brief explanation the dude starts the process of injecting barium. Now I was here because my stomach was bothering me, and I have to tell you, it didn't bother me near as bad as this procedure. The cold, hard table was discomforting enough without having 500 cc's of barium blowing up my intestines as well.

"When we're done, you can use the bathroom over there," goatee guy said.

He pointed over his shoulder to a wall with three doors.

"Which door?" I asked.

"The one over there," he said ambiguously.

"Which door?"

It was important to know.

"The one to my left," he declared.

The dude exited then returned a short time later with a big, white pillow. I thought that was nice of the guy because the hard table was very discomforting, then I realized that it wasn't a pillow he was holding. It was another bag of barium. This time 2000 cc's. I began to sweat. After what seemed like an eternity, goatee pillow guy emptied the bag into my swollen guts, then the x-ray part of the program started. I wasn't aware that the table I was lying on articulated to a vertical position so I could stand up for a few wallet size shots. When the pictures were done, a tech person popped into the room saying,

"We have to make sure all the pictures came out before you can evacuate."

So I just stood their in my bare feet before the x-ray table in a dress with 2500 cc's of barium up my exposed ass. The slightest move sent agonizing cramps through my bloated gut. If tech person didn't hurry up, she'd be the one who would need to evacuate. When she returned, she declared,

"Some of them didn't come out."

She left the room again then shot another series of plates while I stood humming King of Pain by the Police. When she returned, she announced that we were done. I bolted for the left door. When I opened it, I discovered it was a closet complete with a yellow bucket on wheels and a mop. For a moment I contemplated tossing the mop and taking a dump right in the yellow bucket Bieber style, but I opted for the middle door instead. It was locked. The bathroom was actually the far right door. Never in my life have I ever had to go that bad. As I was pumping the bilge, goatee guy rapped on the door while asking,

"Sir, are you okay?"

I knew if I didn't answer he would sound a code brown that would have gotten more medical personnel on the scene.

"Yeah fine," I said between agonizing cramps.

A few minutes later he returned,

"Are you sure you're okay, sir?" He asked.

"Yes," I said.

"You don't sound ok," he said.

I found this excruciatingly irritating. I wanted some alone time with my porcelain savior, and this guy was messing up my concentration.

"That's because I have a shitload of an earth metal up my ass!" I yelled.

Francis Nightingale got the message and left me alone. When everything settled down, I found my clothes and got out of there. A few days later Doctor Doom called to inform me everything looked normal. He recommended an upper GI.

"Great," I thought.

The next time I saw Christine, I told her an edited version of my medical story. We just started dating, and it was important for me to keep up the façade of a good catch.

"You don't think it's the tuna fish?" she asked.

"No," I answered.

"Maybe the refrigerator at work is not cold enough?" she surmised.

"Refrigerator?"

"You do put your sandwich in a refrigerator, don't you?"

"Ah, well no."

"Where do you put it?"

"In my desk."

So my stomach problems were caused by unrefrigerated mayonnaise and tuna on hot, fresh wheat bread. It would have been nice if my doctor asked a few questions before he ordered the most invasive medical procedure known to the Animal Kingdom. I chocked it up to stupidity.

And yes, she married me anyway.

Editor's Note: According to Robert's current doctor, this medical procedure is no longer performed as it was replaced by the colonoscopy, thankfully. Originally posted on June 20, 2017.