The Dumpling

Why? What does your plunger look like?

My insurance company sent me a card on my birthday, just like Grandma used to do, only instead of having a five-dollar bill in it, it had a home colon screening kit. I sent Grandma a thank-you note every year, but these folks want something different.

It's pretty easy, but you do have to think about it. Weeks can pass by when you do what you're used to doing and then go, oh crap. I forgot to do the kit again. And it's a little problematic because most of the time when I'm on the toilet all kinds of things can happen. Well not all kinds, but one thing or the other. And in this case, you don't want the One thing, you just want the Other thing.

But finally I remembered to get out the kit at just the right time, at the E.T.A. of the B.M., and I unfolded the tissue paper and laid it neatly on the water surface, and everything was going just fine. Then you get the little twiddle stick and twiddle it in your Issue Of The Residuum, pack it away, and mail it off. It's a tiny twiddler. It looks like a toothbrush for a shrew. You only have the one shot at it, but I had a lot to work with, so I picked a particularly nice spot to twiddle. You don't want to be sending off a corn kernel on a stick.

I packed off my nice sample, fine of texture and hue, and then I cleaned up per usual and gave 'er a flush.

I will pause here to note that I have never plugged up the toilet I use regularly, as it were. My toilet and I are on the same page. Other people have plugged up the toilet. Or more often they make it run on and on. We have a toilet with a little handle in the center of the tank. I thought it was adorable when we picked it out but it has its drawbacks. You are supposed to pull it up gently, but for some reason guests like to reef on it like they're starting up a lawn mower, and then the little chain gets overexcited and bunches up, and the toilet runs on and on. And because you can't just take the tank lid all the way off, because the chain is attached to it, you have to try to fix it blind with your arm jammed under the lid.

But I have never plugged up my toilet. Until now.

I flushed gently, and watched the perfectly centered tissue paper fold up neatly around my production like a Chinese bao--oh, let's go ahead and call it a Dumpling--and wedge itself in the go-away hole. And there it sat, a big toilet bolus. It wasn't awful to look at or anything--it was very neatly wrapped indeed. A bow wouldn't have been at all out of place.

I've certainly plugged up a toilet before. Not mine. Notably, I once visited a world of hurt on the spotless bathroom belonging to an obsessively tidy gentleman who threw himself off a bridge shortly after the incident, and I'm not even kidding. But my record with my own toilet is clean. So this was a situation. Several flushes served only to send the water level to the uh-oh zone. I was not at all inclined to sacrifice a barbecue fork, although I believe a simple perforation would have done the trick. Finally I annoyed the bolus with a plunger and it slipped the swirly bonds. No harm done.

But I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the tidy dead gentleman, and I'm sorry to have handed my mailman a biohazard, and I'm sorry to have stressed out my toilet. Really, I should apologize to my toilet every day. It was such a champ during my last actual colonoscopy prep. I'm not a bit sorry about anything that might have happened during my colonoscopy. Those people had it coming.

The Music Of The Spheres

So I had my first colonoscopy right on schedule a few years back, and evidently I passed it with flying colors. Lord knows something passed with flying colors. And now they've started asking me to take more of a personal hand in my routine testing. This is why I was sent home from Kaiser with a small envelope containing everything I would need to collect my own stool sample and send it through the mail. I'm always getting shit in the mail, so it's sort of a novelty to send some back.

The thing is, this is one of those areas I've always preferred to leave to others. Maybe it's because I've never been a mom or a janitor, and I have been a baby--but if someone has to deal with what lands in the toilet, I'd rather it were someone else. The colonoscopy, for instance, didn't require all that much of me. My only role was the night before, and that wasn't really any big deal. You just do what comes naturally, only louder and with more pep. Once you've gotten to the clinic and have your gown on, your part is pretty much over with. In my case, I did come to, at some point towards the end of the procedure, and was able to watch some of the goings-on on a TV monitor and recognize what I was looking at. But I could tell I wasn't entirely back to normal because normal people do not blow "Oklahoma!" out their ass in a crowded hospital corridor. I recognized the opening note right away, and I discovered that if I exercised a little sphincter control--I believe trumpeters refer to that as "embouchure"--I was able to replicate the tune pretty well. I held onto the "O!" for as long as I could, and by the time the wind came sweepin' down the plain, I'd like to think I had everybody's attention.

The home stool sample kit comes with instructions that are pure literature:

Unfold and put the large collection tissue paper inside the toilet bowl on top of the water. (Don't use the small absorption pad included in the return envelope--you'll need that for something else later.)

Gripping! See how that keeps you on the edge of your seat? It's a page-turner.

Have a bowel movement so that the stool (feces) falls on top of the collection paper.

The paper takes up the entire interior of the toilet bowl. If you miss it, you were way too close to the edge of your seat.

Take a sample of your stool (feces) before it touches the water.

Fortunately, they don't mean in mid-flight. But frankly, seeing your stool plated up like an entree and twirling a spoon in it sort of cancels out the entire beauty of having indoor plumbing. The instructions go on to say you can flush, and to ("please") wipe off the sample bottle if some sample has gotten on the outside. As a former mailman, I can endorse that request.

Dave got a kit at the same time I did, but he's just practicing for now. He's doubtful about the collection tissue paper and is pretty sure he can sink it in one shot. I think he can, too.

Toot! Toot! All Aboard The Colonoscopy Bus

There's something positively electrifying about being with people who are all in one place for a common purpose, bursting with pent-up energy. Picture a starting line for a race. A roomful of kindergartners, waving their hands in the air to be picked. A colonoscopy clinic waiting room.

The waiting room is filled with patients and their designated drivers, so every other person is seated on the edge of his or her chair, clenched with something like excitement, accompanied by a dour companion, who is reading a magazine and breathing shallowly. There is a restroom just a few feet away. This is a good thing. This is a bad thing.

The atmosphere is very like that inside an airplane carrying first-time skydivers, everyone facing forward, maintaining focus. In some very specific respects, it's probably identical.

I couldn't help but think about this when I read about the mammogram bus in central Oregon. Health care can be a little hit-or-miss in rural areas, and many women find it onerous to cram in an appointment (as it were) for a mammogram when they have to travel so far to get one. So the Asher Community Health Center in Fossil, Oregon arranged to pick these women up and take them to Bend to get their x-rays, and work in a spa treatment and a shopping expedition along with it. It's almost a party atmosphere on the bus, with everyone anticipating a day of getting things permed, polished, painted, purchased, and pancaked. It's just this side of jolly.

And I couldn't help but think that if it works for women needing mammograms, maybe it can work for colonoscopy patients, too.

There are probably a few logistics problems to be worked out. The preparation for a mammogram consists of making an appointment and not applying deodorant. The preparation for colonoscopy is a bit more detailed, and leads to a general sense of urgency. So it would have to be part bus, part ambulance. Call it a "flatulance." The siren could be a lot of fun. The bus would require some retrofitting: plastic seat covers would be a good idea, and some sort of hose apparatus might have to be developed which could link individuals into the exhaust system. But a good engineer might be able to make the whole thing pencil out. Rigged up properly, fuel expenses should be close to nil. It should make a dent in the tailgating problem, too.