….we were so important? We’re so important that we got anonymous hate mail!
A person (who thinks they are anonymous) sent us a hateful letter complaining about my attempt at humor during a post about a colonoscopy. Well. Yeah. That sounds like me; failing in an attempt to make a colonoscopy funny. But I don’t remember writing a blog post about a colonoscopy. So I did a word search on the blog. No luck. The word never appears in any blog post I ever wrote. How disappointing. Maybe it was my blog post about a ureter stent? I certainly wrote about that. I wrote about that while in a drug induced haze, so good chance it wasn’t very funny either and the critic is right. (Or maybe our critic can’t tell the difference between the front end and the back end?)
The letter was mean spirited, with quotes such as (and I’m being accurate here):
“…your interesting repulsive so called blog….”
“…which not one person…..thought it at all interesting, rather repulsive, gross.”
“…Who gives a shit rip…”
“Who gives a rip.”
“…today, tomorrow, next week, next year never never never never.”
“Do hope you will never ever print a letter in reference to your colonoscopy or the fluctuating weight.”
Well, I am a man of principle, and I feel bad that the writer put more effort into the critique than I put into the actual blog; particularly since I haven’t even written about a colonoscopy. So let me try to balance things out with a funny story about a colonoscopy:
I called my friend Andy, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis . Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner.
I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!' I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America's enemies.
I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous. Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor.
In the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons). Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon..
The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose, watery bowel movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.
MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but, have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.
The story goes on, but you get the idea….and I didn’t actually write it myself, so it might actually be funny too.
Hopefully I have evened out our relative efforts and all will be alright in the blog critic’s world now.
