For several years back in the day I suffered from strange bouts of stomach pain and other troublesome symptoms. The doctors had tried giving me different prescriptions and diet plans without success. Several exploratory surgeries later and I was still no closer to gastronomic salvation. Sitting in yet another doctor's office, through referral, I was answering the familiar round of questions and allowing cold equipment to be thrust in to my eyes and ears as if somehow my problems were located in those cavities instead of down in my warm gutty wuts. I began wondering what this guy was getting at with the old rigamarole and if I was ever going to find a doctor that cared enough to look at my problems in a new way when all of a sudden he piped up that he wanted to look at my whole "tract". We began talking about how the digestive system works and where things go after they've passed over your taste buds and with that hope begin to spring in my mind. He explained the procedure, the cameras, the fasting, and the resulting images they would have for the first time. It sounded good and I said it was a deal.
That following Monday I began my fast. I couldn't eat anything but was allowed to drink any clear liquid I wanted. All the Gatorade, water, broth, and apple juice I ever wanted could be mine. I had to let all the material in my body clear out before they could photograph my innards. The fasting would make me clean as a whistle. Little did I know that it would make me hallucinate, lose control of my faculties, and go all Edgar Allan Poe as well.
Day 1 was pretty uneventful with only murmurs from underneath my shirt to remind me that something was going on. The night was a little rough with nightmares waking me up and a fridge waiting down stairs in the dark to unfold all of her chill-preserved delights. Like a demon beckoning the sinful to commit a crime the appliance worked my every nerve until dawn. I felt much better showering and putting on my work clothes for a full day of distraction and mild labor.
Day 2 was all about channeling my energy. Every time I saw a buddy eat a handful of mixed nuts or sandwich from a Ziploc bag I wanted to non-nonchalantly ask for a portion under the ruse "I forgot my lunch." but this wasn't about losing weight or for a dare, it was for my health. I had to do it! And so the day wore on, and I do mean wore on...me. I thought of food incessantly. Everyone seemed to be eating constantly. Snacks. Lunch. Early dinner. Noonsies. For the love of all that is holy, why?! I went to bed after I got home and drank vegetable broth and a 20 oz lemon flavored Gatorade. I was hoping that sleep would save me from my suffering. I was wrong. Again the nightmares plagued me, night sweats too.
Day 3 was the end of my fast. I went to the doctor's bright and early with bells on my toes. I sat in the waiting room looking at everyone with a vengeful eye. The thought that each one of them was here to see my doctor tortured my mind while I wished for each stranger to have cold sores or warts. I need everyone in that room to get the hell out of my way so we could get this motherlovin' procedure over with. Thoughts of bean burritos and crackers loaded with cheese filled the spaces between my anguish and hatred for the other patients. Each named called by the nurse at the desk elicited a spike of excitement followed by the deepest darkness when it wasn't my name. Finally she called my name and it might as well have been an ice cream truck 19 years earlier the way I ran passed her in to the hallway towards the doctor's private room. We went through the "How are you?" and "Let's check you out." quickly so I could get under the x-ray and off to eat. After disrobing and getting my picture taken I sat on the ugly green upholstered inspection table awaiting his return for what seemed like an hour. About 10 minutes later he walked in and informed me that my "tract" wasn't clear yet and that I would have to continue to fast. I almost wept. I almost got up and told him to shove a tongue depressor up his rectum. I almost said screw it all. Instead, I hung my head and thanked him. Off to work to starve all day long and avoid the world as they ate what seemed like a cornucopia of tender vittles. Mer de noms shoveling bite after bite into each hungry hole while my own sad hole went empty.
I went to bed immediately after work. I had to hide from everyone and everything, including myself.
Day 4 was like a dream from the moment I woke up. I felt like cellophane and lighter than a dust bunny. Trying to work was the worst and every action I tried to command of my body was met with resistance. All my thoughts seemed to be melting in a heat of hunger and left me without aim or ability. Everyone either made fun of me for my obvious weakened state or pitied me like a leper standing on the other side of the fence. I achieved very little that day and shouldn't have driven home as I don't remember operating any machinery. I had begun drinking Gatorade and vegetable broth by the gallon in hopes that it would fill me up or make me explode. Freedom from this mortal coil was all that I wished for that night as I did not kneel before my bed and if I did it was from weakness and the inability to reach the mattress before my legs gave out. I slept in a dry sea. Not rolling on the waves of dreams but resting still as a corpse on the cracked, but smooth, surface of an ancient sea. Rest came for me but not peace.
Day 5 was the last I was going to do no matter what the doctors said or what I needed to do for my health. It was a sunny Friday and the week had passed slow like a death row sentence. I barely made it to the doctor's office for the final check-in. A quick scan showed me clear and ready for the procedure so off they sent me in the pale blue gown. I walked in to a larger than normal x-ray room with a what can only be described as Dr. Evil's death ray machine pointing down at a little metal table. Two young and attractive nurses began to prep items on a table and provide me instructions.
I was to lie face down on the table and keep my arms stretched above my head. They were going to open the back of my gown and expose my rump to the air. In intervals they were going to insert a tube in my glory hole and force a white reactive liquid in to my bowels followed by blasts of air. I was not to fight against the pressure or anything else of that matter and listen to their softly spoken commands throughout the event.
Meanwhile, I am trying to maintain composure through my delirious state and not notice the 10 foot long mirror at the other side of the room. The nurses made me blush, the tubes made me uncomfortable, and that mirror made me extremely self conscious.
As the first of the liquid filled my cavity (sorry folks, this is my story!) followed by an air burst I wanted to call foul! My body was demanding that I force everything right back out and I was about to when the image of those two young nurses standing behind me getting inadvertently painted white by the reactive stuff they were filling my bottom with stopped my urges. The table began to tilt my head down and my feet up. The death ray whirred to life and the air kept pumping in me. I could feel my stomach getting larger and the inevitable was upon me. From somewhere behind me a heard a lovely voice say "You can release now Mr. Davis." and I did.
What a mess!
The table returned to a flat position and one of the nurses came over to wipe me up. I decided two things: I was never going to look these women in the face, and I was never going to be old and incontinent.
The nurse spoke similar words of instruction and reassurance as she came along my side to adjust something which attracted my attention to the side. I felt the need to make sure whatever she was doing to my anus was not painful or too revealing. What I saw when I turned my head was that mirror was no longer an opaque reflection of the torment I was enduring but was now a window back lit with several men standing as audience. No Greek choir were these men, here to sing the troubled song of my tragedy, but doctors virgin to the procedure I was conceding to and here to bare first witness, like my butt-hole.
On and on the nauseating tilting of the table and filling of my cavity went.
"Mr. Davis, don't..." and "It's ok now Mr. Davis..."
Finally, it was over and the tube were extracted and the nurses stepped away from my broken and useless body. The blonde one pointed towards a door and said "The bathroom is right there. Go on in and just let everything out. You can go get dressed after that. Thank you."
I goosed stepped to that bathroom using my butt cheeks like vices to hold in every last bit of dignity I had until I could sit down on the toilet.
Once I sat down on the toilet I had about two seconds left of will when I noticed that the door I came in had about a three inch gap from the floor to the bottom of the door and the same for the door I was supposed to exit from.
It didn't matter at that point. My butt, weakened from the labor I had just demanded of it, and opened up the flood gates. Sounds of moose in rut, a Pacific island volcano erupting from the sea, and semi's tractor trailer tire impacting a steel shard filled the small bathroom. The x-ray room echoed a dull return of my outbursts. Much to my horror the door I was to exit through didn't go to the dressing room but in to the hallway connecting the many doctor's private rooms and the waiting room I was in not 30 minutes ago.
In between the deafening roar of my ass I heard people gasp, make sounds of astonishment, anguish, and laughter. I decided there was no way I could exit through that door and in to what could only be a crowd of people waiting to mock me then burn my carcass like a witch.
When I finally had expelled everything they had put in me and cleaned what there was to clean off the floor, toilet seat, toilet back, and my legs, I stood up and tried to open the door I came in through. It was locked.
You heartless hinds! You sick practitioners of human torment! A one way street of shame eh?
I had to walk through that hallway door and in to my humiliation. So I opened it and walked out like the broken piece of trash that I was towards the room where my clothes hung and got dressed. I skulked out of that hospital like a pervert getting therapy and ran to my car.
I couldn't drive my car fast enough to Taco Bell. I ordered a Double Decker Taco and a 7 Layer Burrito and tried to eat them like a hyena eating its first zebra in weeks. I got about halfway through the burrito when max capacity was reached in my shrunken stomach. I looked wistfully at the remainders of my food and promised to devour them soon enough.
Off to work I went with a renewed since of humility and love of mastication.
Only 4 hours later I would be entering in to a whole new realm of experience. An all new low in human behavior and depravity.
This story will be told in the continuation as "Drinking With Santa Claus".
No comments:
Post a Comment