So, I had to have a complete physical because I am a Diabetic
and once that happens it's open season for the doctors and all who are attached to them. So, a sigmoidascope is part of a complete physical. A colonoscopy is the same thing but you get put to sleep for that. I bet that's better. If a nurse has to be there, I would prefer an old old one who
thinks everybody under 70 is a little kid. They don't judge you. But I stayed awake and it was only me and Dr. Sigmoid. Except for while I waited in what was apparently the supply room for the whole building, wearing nothing but a bed sheet and a shiny film of fresh sweat.
But before I had my core sampled, I had homework to do. I had a whole instruction sheet to follow. Not eating red meat for a week was pretty easy and spared me a few meals with Mother, who only eats red meet and bread and vodka. She swallows really loud which bugs me. Pooping into a little mesh basket and getting a little scoop of that and dropping it off at the doctor's office was kind of an ordeal and an excercise in doing something you feel you can't and shouldn't anyway. It's a small, shallow basket, which is probably great for some people but not for me by any means. I process in bulk. Some guys pick up a stack of books or a laptop and you know they are headed for the bathroom. I might have time to read a headline before I'm all done.  My train is fast and unstoppable. You better be on the platform when it comes in, if you know what I mean. I thought it would be a good joke to bring in the whole basket, wrapped in tinfoil, like I saw a guy do when he brought his Saint Bernard into the Vet's office and had a poop sample wrapped in a lot of tin foil and his dog
jerked on the leash and he dropped it on the floor with a mighty plop and I bet he wished he had used a stronger foil after it hit the floor and flattened out. So I did the sample and it was a harrowing experience that I can't tell you about because it's way too personal and revealing. Then, the night before, I had to take a "Dulcolax" which was really easy and not bad
like I thought it would be. I thought it would be like in the movies, where a guy gets slipped a laxative and his eyes bug out and he drops his load while he's getting a glass of water.
After that, right before you leave to go to the doctor's you are supposed to take TWO "Fleet" enemas. Two in a row. What nobody told me, is that it's a really great idea to warm those up. Never mind that reaching around behind you with what basically looks like a clear ketchup squeezer and squeezing it into your but is not so easy. Then when the ice cold enema hits your gut (cuz nobody told you to warm it up) it's kind of like getting punched in the stomach. Mother wanted to help me but I would rather get kicked in the balls. Not by Mother.
By the time you get to the doctor's office, you are just about as meek as a little lamb, which is maybe why they put you through all that enema stuff. My doctor is pretty old, which I prefer. But he also gives an old fashioned
physical. He gives a glaucoma test where, instead of poofing air against your eye, he puts numbing drops in them and actually bounces this metal springy thingy, which looks like those teeny hand held postal scales, right against your bare naked eyeball. I bet the guy who invented the sigmoidoscope has been dead for years.

When it's time for the Sigmoidoscope, I had to stand in this little room, wrapped with a sheet, waiting for my doctor. Ten or fifteen nurses came in and got stuff out of the cupboards while I waited. It was cold and I was shivering but sweat was trickling down my sides from my armpits. There was a little table, which he had me get onto, on all fours. He was sitting next to a machine with a hose sticking out of it. It kind of looked like those air pumps at the gas station that you have to stick 75 cents into. It didn't go "ding!" though. He had a little TV which would show him the way as he made his way around the hills and curves that is my intestines. I have an aunt whose husband was a gastrointologist and he was trained to thread a hose into your butt and up through your digestive track and if neccessary, out your mouth. Or the other way around! Well, it wasn't bad at first, but in order to get around the tight spots, he pumps air into you. By the time the hose is up as high as your heart, it doesn't feel great. In fact, I thought that all the emotional stress of the operation was just too much for me and I was having a heart attack right there on the table. I did one thing I really didn't want to do at all and that was moan. My eyes crossed and I moaned like Jackie Gleason when he hit his thumb with a hammer, or like a woman in a porno and either one was bad, to me.
I bet that's what it sounds like in a prison scene, during, you-know-what. But, while the hose is making it's way tou your throat, the doctor keeps tilting the table and there are no hand or foot holds and your attention is mostly focused on not actually sliding off it and on to the floor. I'm not kidding. While I kind of would like to see somebody do that, with a hose up their butt, I don't want it to be me. Well, once he makes you groan, it's over. The doctor releases the air and thankfully, it doesn't sound like a five minute fart. My doctor handed me some kleenex and said "now wipe your bottom with this and you can get dressed and wait for me in my office. "Yes, sir." I squeaked. I should mention before I forget that my doctor is an albino negro. Real albino, which means that even your eyes are red, like a rabbit, which once I figured that out, I couldn't stop scrutinizing him and especially trying to look into his eyeballs, which I could have done for hours.  I've only seen two or three albinos in my whole life, but I seem to remember something about Johnny Winter (not Johnathan Winters, the dead, funny guy) being a true albino. My doctor said I was healthy way up in there, no albino aligators or pollips or dimes from 1961 or anything. He said that when you get to be an old fart like him you have a sigmoidoscope twice a year but once every two or three years was enough for me. I didn't tell him that once every twelve or fifteen years was better for me but that's more what I have in mind.
The above report was for real and true and no names were changed at all, unless I mis-spelled sigmoidoscope.
Your reporter,
Dick Tater.

P.S. in the future, I should call stories like this, "Health Beat" or something and I will try to work on my tabbing and spelling. "Health Watch", maybe. "Life on Uranus"... Get it?????