La Colonscopie

Content warning: This story contains a description of a perfectly normal medical procedure that happens to involve one’s butt.

Artist’s rendition of the photo report of my digestive plumbing

Sometimes as an old guy you have to seek fulfillment in the inevitable.

Take colonoscopies.

Having one is about as fun as having a lubed cable with a scissored tip inserted six meters up your large intestine. I should know: I’ve had it done four times.*

But it’s a must-do. I had my first in Croatia, without anesthesia. It was pretty awesome watching my intestinal walls unfold on live video, as if I were a tiny doctor from the Fantastic Voyage movie looking through a window while floating through some guy’s artery.

It was also uncomfortable. Why did I do it that way? Because my physician, a former Army nurse, suggested it. And this was 2005, before Big Pharma helped the world understand that pain is unnatural and must be avoided at all costs.

I also did it for the same reason I once hoped to be a professional musician: I was an idiot.

In France they insist on knocking you out, and instead of intestinal discomfort you struggle with painful bureaucracy and, in my case, a farmers’ strike blocking traffic the day of the procedure.

But let me back up. During my last colonoscopy they found a polyp, which triggered a follow-up procedure five years later. Now I was overdue and on the archipelagic French health care system, which I had to navigate in the French language.

First I had to get a referral from a GP. Then came a consultation with the gastroenterologist, which required a one-hour drive to the clinic. He seemed interested that I was a bicyclist. On the wall behind him hung a black-and-white pano of a half-dozen elephants and a shirtless human escort crossing a tiny footbridge over a deep chasm. Cool, I thought. I asked if he took the photo.

“Non,” he answered, “and it’s almost certainly fake, because it’s unlikely one let alone a dozen elephants could cross a wooden footbridge without falling to their death.”

Duh. “Ah bon,” I said.

“But I keep it there to help patients understand the journey of colon health,” he added.

I nodded, missing whatever point he was trying to make.

After typing forever on his computer, he explained I’d have to come back in a few days to meet with the anesthetist. Then he gave me a ream of forms and instructions with a list of allowed and forbidden foods.

In the States, the entire list might have consisted of whichever brands of jello and plain crackers were being marketed to the colonoscopy industry. This being France, permitted foods included white cheese, petit suisses, Gruyere, Hollande, Bonbel, St-Paulin, Port Salut, Tomme, Emmenthal, comte, and cantal.

As for allowable meats, they included horse, veal, defatted lamb ribs, defatted ham, poultry without skin, brains, and tongue “depending on preparation” (which I guessed meant “well-done,” i.e. raw in the middle.)

Items on the interdit (no-no) list included fermented cheeses with more than 45% fat, including Bleu d'Auvergne and Bresse, Brie, Carré de l'Est, Roquefort, Pont l'Évêque, Munster, fromage frais as well as game, offal, tripe, kidneys, snail, shellfish and crustaceans in sauce, fried, smoked, salted, dried, preserved in oil or herbs or wine.

Sacre bleu! How could I live without my daily snail with Brie?

Susanne kindly went shopping for me and I soon began my special diet. On the appointed day I drove for an hour back to the clinic to meet with the anesthetist, who spent five minutes with me before having me sign various release forms and sending me home again.

Meanwhile, France’s farmers went on strike. They began shutting down the roads. I watched the news and strategized to get to my clinic: there was no way I was going on this diet twice.

On Google Maps the morning of the procedure, all the major arteries leading to the clinic were marked in red with “no-entry” signs indicating they were blocked end-to-end by tractors. Rumor had it the minor ones could be closed too on short notice. I packed a go-bag with a change of clothes (including two pairs of underpants) and my computer, in case I had to stay overnight, and a roll of toilet paper for the road.

We gave ourselves an extra hour to make the trip.

I had of course skipped breakfast, instead downing a gallon of water mixed with two packets of metallic powder that gave me a massive case of the runs just before I got into the car. We set out, and sure enough, the main road from Apt was closed at various points. Susanne began driving on back roads, and we swayed on switchbacks for what felt to my gut like 24 Hours of Le Mans.

In the end it took a combo of Google Maps, Waze, and Kegel muscles I didn’t know I had to arrive without an “accident” en route.

My earlier consultations had been mostly covered by the French healthcare system. Today, however, I found myself at check-in making one full payment by credit card and another, strangely, in cash in an envelope.

The designated waiting area was by a coffee machine, which was just cruel: given my caffeine deprivation, the ten minutes spent there would be the most challenging part of the procedure.

Then a nurse escorted me to a changing area where I donned a surgical outfit and, to my great relief, had a last stop at a restroom. I was then taken to my personal waiting area, where I enjoyed a half-hour of in-flight entertainment: the nurse swung a TV monitor suspended from what looked like a dental pendant in front of me. There must have been 1,000 video selections to choose from, and I went with “Top Gun: Maverick.”

I briefly wondered where Tom Cruise got his colonoscopies but figured he probably did the procedures himself. What a guy.

Various women introducing themselves as my doctors checked on me one-by-one to confirm I was indeed myself with such-and-such birthdate and that I had no allergies.

A charming nurse finally wheeled me into the procedure room, where I fell in love with her smile. Then she told me to lie on my side, which brought me back to reality. The doctor arrived, saying “Ah, le bicycliste!”, followed by the anesthetist, and someone injected me with something.

As I went under I murmured, “Bonne nuit,” and within a microsecond awoke feeling FINE. I had no embarrassing gas as in past procedures, nor was there any pain or even a tiny sensation that they had done anything down there.

Thus it was that, after four appointments conducted in French and gobs of paperwork and weird payments and dodging tractors, the procedure was complete. And despite having spent 15 minutes unconscious and naked while being consensually violated and photographed by strangers in a foreign country, I experienced a moment of old-guy fulfillment.

To make sure I didn’t topple over from the anesthetic, they had me watch another half-hour of Tom Cruise before letting me get up. I changed back into my civvies and they gave me food and COFFEE! Susanne was there waiting, and soon she took me back to the car for our wending ride through back roads to our home in Apt.

As for the results, they found the usual old-guy diverticula (note to self: eat your bran) as well as another polyp, which guaranteed another colonoscopy in five years. But I was colon-cancer free. Yay.

As the French might say about the whole ordeal, “C'était la peine,” which literally translates to “That was punishment.” But to the French it means, “It was totally worth it.”

I can’t imagine a more perfect expression.

* Five if you count the asswise soulectomy I endured for 13 years as a senior-level bureaucrat