The day of the ingress

I was thankful, in the end, that I have a diminished sense of smell, for the only sound I could hear as I entered the room was of joyful flatulence. "Let it out, sir," said the Sikh orderly who was leading me to the preparation room. "It's good for the stomach." I thought how much Ottawacker Jr. would have enjoyed being here.

'Here' was the Provis Rudd Colonoscopy Clinic, and I was about to learn whether my new doctor was being thorough or chicken.

I was led to a curtained area, in which there was a bed and a small box. I wasn't sure what was in the small box and I was a little scared to look. So I didn't. I just did as I was told. This meant taking off my sweater, leaving my t-shirt on, and putting my arms through a hospital gown, which was tied behind my back. This was a good idea. I'd finished my last 2 litres of Peglytes four hours previously. While the resulting cascades had diminished from Niagara Falls to the Fairy Glen, they had merely diminished, not ceased. I'd managed to make it to the toilet five minutes before being ushered into the prep room. My thoughts were naturally on what might happen were my sphincter muscles to be relaxed under anaesthetic. But how do you broach this topic with an admitting orderly?

"Take off your trousers and your underwear, please," said the nurse, with no hint of a smile. Would a smile have made it better? My God, I thought, it's like being a public schoolboy. But he stepped outside the curtain, congratulated the nearest occupant of a curtained cublicle on a particulary loud fart ("very good for the stomach, sir") and walked away. I started to undress, taking off my jeans ("Make sure you wear loose clothing," the receptionist had said when booking the appointment with me. "Loose clothing?" I had replied. "After Christmas?"), folding them up and putting them on the bed. Then I took off my boxer shorts, letting them fall to my feet. I took out my left foot, and tried to kick the shorts up to where my hands were. The space in which I was standing made it difficult to bend over, even for someone without two arthritic hips.

Trying to flick the boxers up to my foot was not the best idea I have ever had. You see, the curtain around my space did not go all the way to the floor. There was a one-foot gap at the bottom of it, and when I attempted to kick the boxer shorts off my foot and into my hand, the boxers decided instead to fly out of my hand and out of the cubicle. I stood there, disbelieving. Still, at least I had a gown on. 

I put my head out of the curtain and looked for the nurse. There was no sign of him, so I looked for the boxers. They were half-in and half-out of the cubicle opposite me. So I opened my curtain fully and strode across the floor, and bent over to pick up my errant shorts.

"Oh, is that a full moon I see, sir?" came a voice from behind me. "Are you lost sir? You must stay in your area. What are you doing?"
"My shorts," I stammered. "They, erm, came off."

Even I could see this was an implausible response. "You need to put your clothes in the box provided sir. You should not be putting your clothes in anyone else's box. Nor in their cubicle. I am sorry, sir, but you must comply with the rules."

Chastened, I made my way back to the cublicle. "This is the box into which you must place your clothes sir," he said, pointing at the closed box on the bed.
"I didn't know what it was for," I said.
"What did you think it was for?" he said, a little more forecefully than he might have done. "Let it out, sir. Good for the stomach sir," he shouted to someone further down the ward." Then he turned back to me. "It's not called Pandora, sir," he said. "You can open it."

Eventually, he managed to accept my excuse and went out to get the preparation kit. "Make sure you are lying on the bed when I get back, sir. Unless you have any other visits you need to make?" I got onto the bed.

Back he came two minutes later, took my blood pressure "very high sir, are you suffering from hypertension?" and measured my OSats. Then he went through the checklist of questions and finished by explaining that the anaesthetist would be along soon but, in the meantime, he was going to put in the IV.

It was worse than I feared. Not only had I not had anything to drink for three hours and spent the past 24 hours voiding my stomach of anything resembling liquid, he had rather an unusual technique. Constantly interrupting his own search for a vein to shout encouragement to the wind-breakers, the flatulent and the borborygmic, he set about slapping my wrist with all the enthusiasm of a teenage schoolboy discovering Samantha Fox.  "It's in there somewhere, sir, he laughed. "Let it out sir, it's good for the stomach." I had no idea if he was talking to me or not. 

He finally managed to insert the required line, and departed with the broadest of smiles.

I waited, less than eagerly, for the arrival of the anaesthetist. When he came, he turned out to be a Dubliner of my own age, mid 30s, who was the gentlest and most amiable of souls. He took me in, chatting about Dublin and his visits to Liverpool as a student. He introduced me to the gastroenterologist, who was friendly and cheerful. 

"We'll have you back home in no time," he said. "You may have some stomach cramps after the procedure, it is totally normal. You'll have some gas and may well need to pass wind. Go ahead and do it. It's good for the stomach."