Damien Galeone

Way back in January, I called the gastroenterology department of the clinic next door to my home and in childish Czech managed arranged a colonoscopy. We settled on May 26. I hung up the phone satisfied with my linguistic victory and slapped the referral up on the fridge under a Guinness magnet and went about my day.

I then went about my day quite normally, as if I had not just arranged for a group of strangers to navigate a long scope up my ass. For three and a half months that referral and that word ‘colonoscopy’ was a theory, a procedure of the future, a word that evinced a solid level of responsibility for a man entering his fifties. Since I turned fifty, I haven’t felt much different, as if I was still in my forties but someone had accidentally let me into a club I didn’t belong to.

But now with the word ‘colonoscopy’ I felt that I had convincingly entered that demographic. I could drop it into conversations like the older folks I have known. ‘Nah, can’t do it that week, I’ve got my colonoscopy.’ It’s just what you say. It’s routine. You’re fifty. You have a medical responsibility. But in the subtitle of everyday language, you are telling someone ‘Sorry. On the morning of May 26, someone is going to lube me up and stick at least one medical instrument up my ass. And that is why I can’t play Laser Tag that day.’

What you leave out to everyone, except for your close friends, live-in partner, pets, and those who have been there before, is what you have to do on May 25.

On May 6, I arrive at the department for the procedure’s prep meeting. The nurse explains to me there is a diet for 5 days beforehand (I didn’t know this) and then she sends me a prescription for the laxatives which will give the doctors ‘the clearest possible image of my colon’. Surely you can do the math here. To get a clear image of a lower GI tract, you need to clean it out. Totally. And what better to do that job than Clensia?

On my way out of the clinic I pop into the pharmacy and get my laxatives. They come in a white box with black lettering. The biggest word by far on this box is Clensia. The name sort of says it all. Though it leaves out ‘Clensia out until you are a weeping puddle of sadness’. The box contains 8 sacks of laxative (4 big, 4 small), but feels as though it’s carrying a few hefty novellas. I’d write that the pharmacist gives me a sympathetic look, but that would be a boldfaced lie. She has given out far worse for far worse to far unhappier people. She cares very little about my rump and its future.

Much like my referral, the box of Clensia sits and waits on a shelf, watching me in its theoretical usefulness for around two weeks. The days inch closer and closer until I have to read the instructions.

Oh, I have some idea of what this entails. You drink a powerful laxative concoction, which works its magic, shocking your body into action and submission all at once, and everything that ever existed in your body that isn’t bolted down comes flying out at the speed of sound. I make a simple plan. Obviously, I’m not leaving home. I have a lot of work to do. Burke will be on dog-walking duty for the day. I plan to sit at my desk and work, and when the need ‘arises’ I will head the twenty or so feet to the bathroom – which I have outfitted with my spare set of reading glasses and the book I’m currently reading. It’s all set. It won’t be so bad.  

This sentence’s job should be a hyperbolic description of how wrong ‘it won’t be so bad’ was. My powers of exaggeration, however, fail me. The concoction doesn’t so much do ‘magic’ in my system as it becomes fed-after-midnight-gremlins who then go to town on my colon like it’s Randy Peltzer’s kitchen. Oh, medical professionals also leave out the part where all that stuff flying out of your body takes with it any remaining electrolytes, any residual optimism left over from your youth, and your will to live. By mid-afternoon, I have counted the steps from my desk to the bathroom – fifteen. An hour later, I trade in my pants for a big towel. There’s no point in putting pants back on when they’re just going to be removed in a panicked state. By late-afternoon, I stop sitting down to work. Instead, I opt to stand at the kitchen counter, which is ten steps from the bathroom. Trust me, those five steps matter. I stand and do my work. In no pants. Crying.

I should stop complaining. Medical advancements and technology have come a long way in making fifty-year-olds in 2025 as healthy and vital as thirty-five-year-olds in 1985. They can replace our old parts like knees and hips. They have found ways to make sure we live longer and with a much better quality of life. And one of the big reasons for that is the colonoscopy.

The word ‘colonoscopy’ has become such a part of our lexicon that it’s maybe surprising to realize that it’s only been part of our mainstream medical culture since 1997. It became more common practice only in the early-mid-2000s. And the effects are undeniable. Between 1970 and 2020 there was a 50% drop in colorectal cancer deaths – basically due to the colonoscopy as a screening process.

Surely there are untold millions among the previous generations who would have happily dealt with a day of aggressive pooping before getting a scope up their rear had it prevented what was to come. While this insight makes sense to me now, post-procedure, it lacks the intended impact late in my prep day, as I have become a moaning, pantless fool who is sitting on the toilet for the thirtieth or so time that day.  

My procedure is at 7 am. I am brought in quickly, given colonoscopy pants (they are light and have, as you may guess, an easy-access gap in the rear. By the time I am pulling my knees to my chest and the nurse is sedating me, I am ready for whatever comes. And as I slip off into a definitely-could-be-deeper state of unawareness, I wonder if that’s a subsidiary goal of the prep day: to create a misery so profound that the misery that comes later is not as miserable.      

Well, at least I’ll have something to bring up to my 50-year-old friends.