His & Hers

Our 1st wedding anniversary is rapidly approaching, and the celebrating has already begun. As I've noted before, I'm 50 and Deborah is a very young XX (a number less than 50), so based on our doctor's recommendations, we scheduled his and hers colonoscopies. Now there's love.

Deborah went first about a month ago, and I helped her through it as best as I could. I went for my colonoscopy yesterday. Now for those that don't know, a colonoscopy uses an endoscope to go into the colon and look for polyps or tumors or something other than healthy tissue. In order to do that, the colon must be clear of...well...whatever normally occupies the colon. Think about it.

To cleanse the digestive system, the patient goes on a liquid diet for 24 hours or so, and the doctor prescribes a little more than a gallon of laxative. Deborah's a petite girl, and when she comes out of the bathroom exclaiming, "I can't believe that came out of me," I immediately started to worry. Because I'm anything but petite, and what's in me could be as big as Deborah--not what's in her, but equal to the size of her.

So anyway, Deborah makes it through the most invasive of procedures, and it's now my turn. So I get my prescription and go to the pharmacy. I know our pharmacist because her daughter goes to school with Lexie. You know, pharmacists know it all. Even more so than doctors. "Hello, Mr. Craig, how's the high blood pressure, congestion, acid reflux, depression, chronic pain, herpes simplex 1, erectile dysfunction, and oh, I see that now you need to flush your colon. Colonoscopy?" Nothing is truly private.

Deborah had told me that I would need to spend several hours in the bathroom, so while I was picking up the gallon of laxative, I decided to pick up a package of toilet paper. Deborah knows that I will buy anything and not blink an eye. You need tampons, I'm you're guy. Feminine hygiene, family planning, or sex toys, I'll stand in a long line at Wal-Mart and ask people's opinion of what I'm buying. It's no big deal.

But I'm standing at the pharmacy debating on whether to buy toilet paper with my prescription for CoLyte at the same time from a pharmacist that I know. Eventually, I decided what the hell, and I went to the counter with a package of Charmin Ultra Soft. After ringing up the CoLyte and the Charmin Ultra Soft, the last thing she said to me was, "Don't worry. You won't use all this toilet paper." I know it is hard, but couldn't the pharmacist have pretended that she didn't know what CoLyte was for. Anyway, I looked down at the floor, paid the pharmacist, and tried to walk out of the pharmacy like there was nothing in my colon and this CoLyte stuff was really a big misunderstanding.

After cleansing, and as I'm waiting in the endoscopy room, I'm looking around at the instruments. The nurse had laid out everything for the doctor and I saw about 1/2 a tube of "personal lubricant" squeezed out onto a piece of gauze. Ugh. Okay. Then I looked at the endoscope. The scope had lines marked on it that I concluded represented 10 cm segments, which is about 4 inches. So then I started counting the number of segments, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... holy sh*t...there's like 15 segments. I'm calculating in my head as I'm lying there with IV fluids running, oxygen flowing, and waiting for the sedation to hit. That's like 5 feet of endoscope and a 1/2 pound of lubricant all for me.

During one of my inquisitive moments, I saw a guy on the Internet impale himself with a 3 foot dildo. At the time, I thought no way. No. Way. Now I'm lying on a table looking at 5 feet of endoscope about to go in me. And my only thought was I hope they aren't videoing this. DrBubba's butt may have been on the Internet, but DrBubba's butt with 5 feet of snake inserted doesn't belong on this blog, YouTube, or America's Funniest Videos.

About that time, the nurse asked if I could feel the sedative working, and I said, "yeaazzzzzz...." When I woke up, it was over, and they said I passed.

What makes a doctor specialize in colonoscopy or endoscopy? Do you think they become immune to looking at people's butts. Cause if I had my choice, I would have loved to be the doctor probing Deborah versus the poor dude that had to look at my big ass. I wonder if they go home and tell the wife, "I did three 3's today, a 5, and one 9-1/2. Whoa!"

His and her colonoscopies? Maybe not the 1st wedding anniversary gift on everybody's list, but if it means decades of more wedding anniversaries with Deborah, it was worth every embarrassing second, that is, as long as it's not on YouTube.