Spoiler alert! If you haven’t had a colonoscopy yet, don’t read any further. I don’t want you to miss all the fun. First of all, everyone’s happy to see you. The doctor was amazingly cheerful as he told me he’d never perforated anyone’s colon yet, but there was a one in 5,000 chance he would.

“How many colonoscopies have you done?”

“About 4,999. Now if you could just sign this form that says I told you about the one-in-5,000 chance, we can give you something to relax, and I’ll go to work.”

The guy sticking electrode clips to my chest couldn’t have been happier. The nurse who put a toasty-hot flannel blanket over me also seemed happy. All I could think about was, please finish this so I can run out of here and get something to eat. I’d been on special diets for a week. Don’t eat this; don’t eat that; two days before only liquids; one day before only clear liquids. Drink this awful stuff and take these pills the night before. When I got to the clinic, the form asked me if I had taken all the Miralax and the Dulcolax that had been prescribed. I checked “yes.” The next question was “What were the results?”