Crack me up

By Gordon Robinson

I've heard it said wisdom comes with age. Horseradish! Hands up those who enjoy getting older? Nobody? That's a surprise.

Nobody enjoys middle-age spread? Nightly exercise driven by enlarged prostates? Remembering to forget? Acquiring wisdom is one thing, but if you can't recall any of it, what earthly good is it?

But of all the overrated baggage disguised as 'graceful ageing', there's one particular pleasure that immediately disproves all the hysterical, exaggerated hype about growing old. Sing along to the tune of Dan Hill's Sometimes When We Touch:

I don't like getting older.

It doesn't seem quite fair.

Your memory fades; you need a hearing aid and you lose your hair.

The young men get the women

but I don't give a damn

'cause there's something I get more often than any younger man.

A colonoscopy.

A colonoscopy.

It stirs such feelings

deep inside of me.

When I turned 53, a colonoscopy opened up a whole new world for me.

That was comedy legend Robert Klein's experience. I was in my early 30s when the dreaded procedure first reared its ugly head. Symptoms the details of which created the acronym 'TMI' were followed by a test of such discomfiture and embarrassment (barium enema) that I thought couldn't be surpassed. When the recommended surgeon acted atypically and sent me to the great Dr Michael Lee (as he then was), I breathed a sigh of relief to have avoided the knife.

A 'MOVING' EXPERIENCE

More fool me. Little did I know what was ahead (or, to be more accurate, behind) for me. In his usual calm, unruffled monotone, Michael Lee outlined the process. Back then, it began with three days of starvation. No solids. At all. I took to bed. Then, at noon on the third day, I was instructed to rise again and take three tablespoons of castor oil. Now this ancient remedy many will recall as signalling the end of summer holidays and life as we knew it. From then, I understood clearly that, in any future world of chemical warfare, castor oil was something that couldn't be allowed to fall into the hands of Jamaica's enemies. It's a nuclear laxative.

That evening's experience was akin to a space-shuttle launch, with me as the shuttle. Like a sad movie, it was a moving experience. I occupied the bathroom like a captured outpost spurting violently. I've heard the phrase "anything goes". Well, everything did.

Then, blessed sleep. Upon waking, I travelled, as instructed, to a small cottage behind Nuttall where I met Jamaica's Rosa Klebb - a devout lady called Nurse Athias. She was very, very thorough. I was repeatedly pumped full of gallons of water then sent to the little room, cheeks clenched tighter than a cow's rear end in fly season. After the second trip, Nurse Athias came to inspect my product with her Bureau of Standards stamp.

IT GETS WORSE

"I can't send you to Dr Lee unless you're perfectly clean," she cooed like a pigeon finding its way home. Finally, weak and embarrassed, I staggered up the University Hospital of the West Indies' minor ops stairs muttering, "This can't get worse." That's the day I learned never to challenge 'worse'.

They led me to a room full of other prospective victims. There, inside a little curtained space, I replaced my clothes with one of those hospital gowns designed by sadist perverts to make you feel even more naked than when you're actually naked. By then, you're a broken man who just follows orders, so I sat on a cold bench beside other condemned men (and women) all similarly unclad and awaited my turn at the gallows.

A tiny TV camera

Four feet inside of me.

Some Valium

in a very large sum

and some Vaseline.

I don't have lots of courage.

I know myself no doubt

but my gastroenterologist

knows me inside out.

I was given a light 'sedative', told to roll over on my left side, then Michael Lee approached from behind with a 10,000-foot long garden hose. "Seriously?" I mumbled to him hearing Abba's appropriately named Dancing Queen on his radio. "Want me to turn it up?" he asked innocently, unwittingly providing future political inspiration.

A colonoscopy.

A colonoscopy.

It means so much to see

myself internally.

And, for a modest fee,

a colonoscopy,

opened up a whole new world ... (for me)

It's an apprehensive moment when the doctor asks you to bend.

It's a long long tunnel but I see the light at the end.

Age? Wisdom? Bah! Humbug!

Peace and love.

Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.