So, my ass is bleeding, and I’m not the adventurous sort. All I want is a normal day, but each wipe is a Japanese flag. A big red flag. Colon cancer took my mom’s life, but I don’t overreact. I don’t. I probably underreact.
It’s not like a hemorrhoid. We’re talking substantial blood. I meet with an enterologist, and we schedule a colonoscopy because this is 2023 and affordable health insurance exists.
There’s nothing new in colon prep. I drink their chalky jugs of modified Roto Rooter, and they work. Most users report being unable to sleep due to constant trips to the bathroom. Not this guy. Depending on how tired I am, I can sleep through a lot.
An awful lot.
So, I’m doing laundry at 3:00 AM, really disappointed in myself, when it hits. Mom did laundry in the middle of the night. I was a kid and blamed her nervous personality.
I’m under for the colonoscopy, which is a breeze. They’re in and out, and so am I, with one big catch. They label it “incomplete,” thanks to my “tortuous colon.” Although it sounds judgmental, tortuous means twisted. They can’t get the camera any farther without risking perforating the colon, so I get to schedule and prep for another procedure, a virtual colonography.
A “virtual colonography” sounds whimsical, like you could handle it over Zoom, about as menacing as fireflies, despite being designed by Human Resource demons from Dante’s Seventh Layer of Compliance Paperwork.
Perhaps they introduce themselves first, but with zero anesthesia, a tech shoves a large Lego rectangle up your ass, attached to a hose and a tank of oxygen. Maybe helium. They never explain the rectangular connection. They just pump you up like some pre-twisted balloon animal, inflating your intestines fuller and fuller and fuller still, until you’re left KNOWING you are going to explode. They continue until all you’ve ever known is a cramp, then they tell you not to fart. You don’t want to fart so much as live, but they warn if you pass gas, they’ll have to start all over.
Still pumping, they take images with a gigantic apparatus that costs several thousand dollars to turn on, according to billing.
“Hold it… Steady… Hold. You’re doing great. Just a few more seconds. Hold it. And… keep holding that for me…”
I’m about to fucking pop. I mean it. Something’s about to rupture. Me!
“Almost there… annnnnd…Wait.”
Fuck you!
“And, we’re done.”
“Get this thing out of my ass!” I yell at the closest tech, which is a bad look. She bites down on her cheeks to hide a smile and pulls it out. I sqwaddle off to the restroom, my hands in the air, a giant baby in a hurry.
Sweeping the hospital gown aside, I come out sounding like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, if they were louder than KISS. I alert the building. Even after all the colon prep, the longer I trumpet, the wetter it gets, sounding more like cold starting an old four-stroke outboard.
This red flag is enormous. Copious amounts on a white wad of Charmin. I jump up to check, and I’ve recreated the Shining elevator. I’m bleeding to death.
Hang on.
“PHRAMBAAM-BALAM! BRIGADA-BOOMPH… SQUEE?”
I laugh. I can’t help it. I’m so fucked.
I flush, but the bowl is stained a vibrant pink, with pink splashes up the sides. Perhaps it’s the combination of blood and barium, but I see there are no cleaning supplies here. Because this, too, will be humiliating.
I’ve never stained a toilet. Never heard of such a thing. This has to be a sign. From Mom, I suppose. That this isn’t going away. That it will take a lot more than flushing. That I do have colon cancer, like hers. This is a warning.
I have to go tell the technicians. About their bathroom, not the cancer. Goddammit.
“Stained?” repeats the young woman I’d yelled at.
“Pink. Sorry, but it’s everywhere. Well, that sounds worse… It’s the toilet. Which you might want to shut down until a janitor… It’s hot pink.”
“I’ve got to see this,” the sturdier one announces and leaves.
“Have fun,” her coworker says, making a face. Then, to me: “It happens.” She doesn’t sound like she believes that.
“Colon cancer,” I want to tell her, but I’m dressed and it’s time to go. Not time to air my fears, not to some kid fresh out of school who will not care that when I was a teen, doctors found a grapefruit-size tumor in Mom’s colon and gave her six months. How the acids leaking around her colostomy bag burned the tender skin around her stomach. How she hated that colostomy bag. How we all did.
Mom had a lot of help around her. Dad, my sister and sisters-in-law, neighbors. I did whatever I could, cooking, bringing the Scrabble board to her bedside like she did when I was sick. I look around now and I’m divorced, no kids, no safety net, with only myself to blame.
It’s a long drive home, and I wish the car radio still worked. Instead, I get “Pop Goes the Weasel” repeating through my head before I notice. I am not my father’s intellectual equal. Maybe my mind knows it needs numbing, that this much is too much.
The bleeding stops, but three long days pass before the results come in, and they’re dark days, obsessing on death and poverty, wondering about the price of morphine, the real cost of suicide, and who’d find the body.
My results post online before I get a phone call, and medical school isn’t necessary to decode the standalone phrase at the top, although I’m jarred when I spot that awful last word out of the corner of my eye:
“No large polyps, masses or malignancy.”
It’s not.
Turns out to be hemorrhoids, of which we all have three. Mine have spotted in the past, but all three must have been really bleeding, then the test burst them open (something about a rectangle and 37,000 PSI). I’m told that they’ll always return unless I act, and that there’s a simple procedure. Sticking a chunky Jetson’s toy gun barely up your butt, they pop a tiny rubber band around each hemorrhoid, which shrinks down until it sloughs right off. Three visits, three bands. We proceed, and it couldn’t be easier. Takes seven seconds. No pain, just a little pressure, they do fall off, and I only ever spot one of the deflated pencil erasers in the toilet bowl. Results may vary.
By now, I’ve met my deductible and out-of-pocket. The toy gun up the butt, which sounds more like something a six-year-old best friend might do? Complimentary. I’m only beginning to learn all the perks of becoming a frequent flier—or balloon animal. Colon balloons will be part of my preventive checks from now on. But I’ve eliminated the cause of one hell of a colon cancer red flag. Should that red flag return, I’ll know not to expect such a happy ending. But at least for the rest of 2023, I can guarantee what no hospital gown can—my ass is covered.
