BALANCED?

Well, a little bit off maybe.  The delightful "sedative" I had "just to relax you" before the endoscopy left me just somewhat physically wobbly.  It was great.  After being fully prepped stem-to-stern, with a painless IV inserted by a very beautiful young blonde, the ubiquitous oxygen tube up my nose and draped around the ears, a funny bite pacifier thing in my mouth, the sedator announced she would just give me a little "good medicine to relax you."

 "Ahhhhhhhh..." If I had to swear in court that I actually had this upper GI procedure, I couldn't.  I wanted to say, "Ahhhhhhhh...okay, you can just hold it right there for a few hours," enjoying the feeling that we think we are trying to achieve during deep meditation or possibly after drinking a gallon of actual mai tais in a Waikiki beach bar.  I didn't make it past the third or fourth "h" in "Ahhhhhhhh."  Then I came back like a bodhisattva from my induced nirvana to be confronted with the already-in-progress visual journey through my colon on a high-def screen much much bigger than my laptop's, and with a background commentary that mostly involved the staff comparing notes about their teenaged sons' bad behavior.   (I kept wanting to say that they are all hopeless, but I couldn't do anything but laugh.  I'm not sure they heard me.)

I had been watching a DVD the night before while sloshing down 8-ounce faux mai tais every time the kitchen timer went off, like a really desparate happy hour.  Wong Kar Wai's "Fallen Angels" had more plot, but the visuals of my colon's twists and turns were just as interesting as Chris Doyle's cinematography. (It only lacked a Tony Leung.)  When I had finished drinking (yang?), the action was getting good for the evacuation (yin?) portion of the prep.  Being a little too distracted to follow another subtitled Hong Kong film, I watched "Moonstruck," an old favorite.  The DVD's extra feature about Italian cooking explains why I was craving spaghetti and a meatball on my release from the Endoscopy Unit.

So, speaking after the quick announcement from the doctor, "No polyps, no cancer, no problems from your GERD, just keep doing what you're doing," I must say that if you are of a certain age (50+), and have health insurance (shouldn't everyone?), there is no reason to avoid having a colonoscopy.  If Katie Couric can have it done on TV and Dave Barry can make it sound hilarious even in its apparent horror, you can ENJOY this.  Much in the way we reference root canals, now I can honestly say, when I am in a mind-numbing meeting or during some other tedious waste of my precious time, "I'd rather be having a colonoscopy." Really, I would.