My Date with a Doctor

        I’m getting a colonoscopy tomorrow. It’ll be my second.

        Colonoscopies are a rite of “passage” (pun somewhat intended) when you turn that “certain age,” the age when doctors start looking around in places you thought, for sure, no one would ever be looking.

        Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, of course. But getting a colonoscopy on New Year’s Eve wasn’t a weird Secret Santa present it just worked out with insurance. I got my first colonoscopy five years ago and they found a pre-polyp, noncancerous nodule thingy so now I’m on a five-year return cycle. That one was on New Year’s Eve, too. So it’s like I’ve got a recurring date with my gastroenterologist: whose first name, by the way, is Colin. I am completely serious.

        My first colonoscopy wasn’t all that bad, I guess, looking back. There was the afternoon before in the bathroom “prepping” my innards. And a day without eating. But the “twilight sedative” was kind of nice.

        I know I said some weird things the last time when I was under. I don’t know how personal they got. I remember asking my date, I mean doctor, to see the scope when he was finished. He held the hose up to show me, proudly, like a nature show host wrestling an anaconda on TV.

        My second date with Dr. Colin! I just hope when he’s done this time, he doesn’t blow one of those noisemakers…