Geiger Counter

Valentine’s  Day Date Colonoscopy   For Valentine’s Day this year, my wife drove me to and from a colonoscopy.  I’d made the appointment 10 months earlier. “Our next opening is February 14 of next year,” said the scheduler at UW-Hospital. “That’s a Wednesday.” It sounded vaguely familiar – “Is that president’s day?” I wondered - but my mind was on possible death, probable embarrassment and certain medical bills, so I didn’t dwell on it and said it sounded fine. I didn’t realize it was actually Valentine’s Day until a few weeks ago, when my lovely wife of 17 years asked if I thought we should do anything particularly romantic for the holiday this year. “Actually,” I said while glancing at my calendar. “Um, I need you to take me to a... thing.” I don’t think any medical procedures are particularly romantic, but this particular one is possibly the least romantic kind of all.  Three days before your appointment you have to stop eating most foods. Then, the day before, you have to stop eating any food at all. Then you have to drink a gallon of toxic lemonade that basically gives you dysentery. The next day, you have to stagger into the clinic, answer 800 questions about your health, have a drug cocktail shot into your veins, and wake up with a fentanyl hangover to hear a doctor telling you what the inside of your intestines looks like, and what that means for you in terms of, you know, dying and the like. The options, of course, are that you are definitely going to die very, very soon, or that you are certainly going to die just a little later.  Luckily, I had prepared for my procedure by eating junk food for my entire life, followed by a week of really, really healthy food that I hoped would reverse all the harm I’d done.  The reason I needed to bring my wife is that you are not allowed to drive after the procedure, due to all the drugs they give you, and also because it’s difficult to see the road through all the weeping you are doing.  I wasn’t planning on writing any of this in a column seen (notice I am not using the word “read”) by thousands of people, but when I was picking up the prep solution at the pharmacy, I had the following conversation with the person working there.  “How much do I owe you?” I asked.  “Nothing,” they said. “No reason to add insult to injury.” “Thanks,” I replied.  “So, are we going to read about this in the newspaper?” they asked. I couldn’t tell if they were asking because they wanted to read it or because a colonoscopy sounded like the type of thing I usually write about.  One disturbing trend I’ve noticed as I settle into middle age, is that doctors love showing people their insides. It seems like every time I go to the clinic, someone in a white coat is trying to show me a photo or video of some interior part of my body. I wish to state, for the record, that I don’t want to see any of it. My general advice to doctors is, if you send a scouting party into any part of my body and find things are generally as they should be, please leave them as you found them and get the hell out. If you find anything that’s trying to kill me, please remove it. Either way, I don’t need to watch a slideshow from your expedition.  I respect my body’s privacy and don’t feel some voyeuristic need to check in on my esophagus or lower intestine. These organs have kept me alive for 45 years without ever being seen by me. I have never doubted their existence. It’s not like my spleen is some sasquatch or thylacine and I’m going to jump in the air with excitement when I see a picture you took of it. What I think most doctors are forgetting when they show us these images is that a.) the average person did not go to medical school for eight years and therefore cannot tell the difference between a good organ and a bad one, and b.) most people can live perfectly meaningful lives without ever taking a close, high-resolution look at their colon.  In any case, I can accurately say that I have now been wished a “Happy Valentine’s Day” by a 60-year-old doctor who had just finished showing me a series of images of my viscera.  Many people think this holiday, which my wife assures me falls on February 14 every year, was founded by a saint who was very romantic and loved gift cards, chocolates and flowers. But actually, the name comes from as many as three Catholic saints, two of whom were beheaded and one who was murdered in some other kind of way. Even before that, Valentine’s Day was already taking shape in the form of Lupercalia, an ancient pagan festival held in Rome. Its name comes from the Latin word for wolf, “lupus.” (Romans believed their great culture was founded when a she-wolf nursed two human children named Romulus and Remus.)  It was a fertility festival, and each year the Luperci – who were priests - began the festivities by slaughtering some goats and maybe a dog. They then touched the bloody knives to their own heads, and the blood was wiped off using wool that had been dipped in milk. After this, the people would feast together, then the men made thongs (I swear I’m not making this up) out of the skins of the dead animals and ran around touching women with them. Any woman who was touched by the animal’s skin was gifted with fertility. It was required that the priests laugh during the ceremony.  Merry Lupercalia, everyone!  You can see the obvious trajectory of this holiday to the one we celebrate today, when people celebrate love, and people who are single claim that it’s all a scam made up by greeting card companies.  But love is not a scam. Quite the opposite. It’s one of the few things that isn’t. It’s as real as my lower intestine, and I do not need photographic evidence to believe in it.  Love is real, and it is all around us. As you walk out of the pharmacy with your dreaded colonoscopy prep, you see a hundred cards expressing love and gratitude. Happy birthday. Happy Mother’s Day. Congratulations on your graduation.  And I know love is real because of what you see when you walk into the waiting room at the doctor’s office on the morning of Valentine’s Day: a whole building full of couples. Some young, and many old ones. Half of them dehydrated and filled with dread. The other half there to lean on, waiting to give their partner a ride home while they wake up from their fentanyl cocktails. A day that is, just like the other 364, devoted to love, and companionship, and being together through good times and bad. Sure, we celebrate love formally every 14th of February, but I can assure you that waiting room is full of couples every day of the year. We don’t slaughter as many goats as we used to, sure, and there are less beheadings these days, too. But we still have our ways of showing each other just how much we care.