Insert Foot gets a colonoscopy.

There’s a lot of terrible stuff going on in the world today; things for which we need serious people to find serious solutions instead of falling back on absolutes, hatred and misunderstanding.

So I’m going to write about a stranger shoving a camera up my butt.

Because I’ve hit a … certain age, I had to have a colonoscopy last week.

You actually don’t have to get one just because you reach a certain age. You have to get one after you finally get annoyed with your doctor for sending you an envelope every six months containing a jar and instructions longer than the Bible and more detailed than anything found in a box of IKEA furniture, explaining how to collect the piece of, er … “sample” and send it back to your health provider.

That always makes me think of the poor person who has to open those envelopes. That can’t be why anyone gets a job in health care. That’s a job that’s right up there with murder-scene cleanup and representing Donald Trump in court.

As to whether I just compared a former president of the United States to what’s routinely found in a middle-aged man’s colon … that one’s entirely up to you.

Now, let me stop you right there, because I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. This is not an attempt at writing the definitive piece on having a camera put up one’s bum. Dave Barry wrote that years ago and his brilliance is something that will never be topped in the long and storied history of men writing about their colons being violated by strangers.

Barry is one of the funniest people on the planet and a writer the quality of which I can never be.

But thank you, Dave (I interviewed you on a book tour once; yours, not mine. They don’t let me write books, and you let me call you “Dave.” You helped me get through what I thought was going to be an awful experience (it was still kind of awful).

Barry’s description comparing the night before his colonoscopy to watching the launch of a space shuttle was in my mind constantly the night before my colonoscopy. My kids probably thought I’d finally gone clinically insane when they heard me giggling in the bathroom as I had my own space shuttle launch.

Of course, it’s not the colposcopy that’s the problem. It’s the days leading up to it. You have to start changing your diet a week before, which was problematic for me, as I didn’t even know I had a diet.

I was so scared, I started practicing not eating the previous weekend, because I knew I couldn’t eat for 24 hours before the procedure. I got as far as 22 hours and got dizzy. So, because I’m very health conscious, I then ate an entire bag of Halloween candy.

The way that I did the prep, I had to get three substances to prepare for my colonoscopy: two pills and one vat of fluid, the size of which I had no conception. So when I ordered it by mail from Kaiser, it was too big to put in my mailbox. So they left me a note, saying you have to come and pick this up from the post office. Which panicked me because I immediately thought everyone at the post office would know I was getting a colonoscopy and would think I was some sort of freak. Which, actually, is about right.

So I called Kaiser in tears (not really) and said I need my stuff to launch the space shuttle the night before the camera in my butt thing happens … what do I do? They said come down to the pharmacy and get it.

I went to Kaiser, told them my name, and watched in horror as it took three people to lift this keg of goop onto the counter.

That’s not true, but it was still the size of a big jug of detergent. When the pharmacist put it on the counter, I actually laughed out loud. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that.

So I came home. I probably hadn’t eaten in 24 hours at that point and was already insane, and started force-feeding myself this giant barrel of whatever that tasted like old ocean. Then I read the instructions and started laughing again. Because no one told me I had to drink half, launch the space shuttle, then wake up again at 3:30 a.m., drink the second half,  and launch a second space shuttle.

I did it. And I was proud.

I showed up the next morning for my maiming. The doctor who did it—I hope he was a doctor—was fascinating in his cheeriness. High school cheerleaders aren’t that cheerful. They gave me an IV and drugged me up enough to not only not feel the camera, but to watch the TV screen along with the doctor as he found a thing to scrape out of there. I was asking questions … it was riveting. I didn’t see any Halloween candy anywhere. The drugs were amazing.

Then I straightened up, my friend picked me up, we went across the street so I could inhale a burrito, and I didn’t have cancer. Just knowing that last part, when cancer runs in your family, made the whole day more than worth it.