Barium Enema

Ever had a barium enema? If not, you owe it to yourself to have one, just so you can live through life’s most uncomfortable experience. My doctor had recommended it for me, because he couldn’t see my whole large intestine during my prior colonoscopy and endoscopy. Those are easy. You get put to sleep for them.

The barium job, not so. You have to be wide awake. I think barium enemas must have been discovered during their use as torture devices for prisoners of war (in nations that did not adhere to the Geneva Convention.) Barium sulfate, the compound used in my procedure, can be highly toxic, although the nature of the compound is such that the body absorbs only a little of it. What a relief. That makes me feel so much better. It’s a very useful substance, actually, also used for pigment in paints; in pyrotechnics; in oil-drilling rig machinery; on brake linings; and in acoustic foams. I’d need a chemist to explain to me how that all makes it still ok to inject it into my body.

After donning a hospital gown (opening in the back), a youngish technician brought me into a room and had me lie down on a cold, bare-as-bones metal table on my side. They can’t knock you out because during the procedure, you are required to roll over from side to front to back to side. Plus the table rolls side to side, stands you on your feet, then on your head.

They strapped my ankles down so I wouldn’t slide off the table. The tech then announced that he was inserting a garden hose into my rectum, to inflate the intestine so that it could be seen better. He seemed like a pretty nice guy, kept calling me “hon;” so why was he in a job where he got to inflict such pain? He also inflated a balloon at the end of the nozzle, “to keep it from coming out,” he said. Oh, good. I was worried about that.

After living through this procedure, I am certain that you, like myself, will wind up firmly believing that this particular orifice is most assuredly an exit only, and never an entrance.. A one-way street, with a cop sitting at the end of it to give you a big fat fine if you try to go the wrong way.

Tech Guy went over to a sink, took a two-gallon-sized jug, and started mixing up something whiter than the whitest snow. Then he came back to the steel table and started pouring it down the tube. The tube that ended in my insides.

At this point, The Radiologist came in, seemingly untroubled by my screams. Have you ever noticed that? Doctors and nurses and health care professionals in general are very unimpressed with screams. Crawling into an emergency room pouring out quarts of your own blood, holding one of your own unattached limbs, barely rates a glance, let alone a wheelchair.

I tried appealing to his human nature by begging him to stop the procedure. My very loud protestations that I didn’t want to do it any more fell on deaf ears. I was ordered to roll over, lie on my side, back, hold onto the table while it stood me on my feet and then on my head (really).

OK, they are doing this procedure because they want to look for things that aren’t supposed to be there. I did not go to medical school or even technician school, but I’m pretty sure that nozzles, balloons and radioactive substances are all things that weren’t supposed to be in your large intestine.

About a quarter of the way through, they started telling me “We’re almost done, hon.” Welcome to the world’s biggest lie. But you believe it anyway, because you’re desperate to hold onto some hope, no matter how flimsy. When it finally was over, the tech removed the garden hose and announced that I could now go to the bathroom. Hearing this ranked right up there with announcements like, “Your flight will be landing one hour early” and “school’s out forever.” Legs clamped together tighter than an Olympic gymnast’s, I shuffled into a bathroom that had not been remodeled since it had been built decades before. I knew this because modern bathrooms, even in hospitals, are no longer built with brown cinderblocks and bile-green tile. No soft, pretty, comforting surfaces for the poor sods who just endured The Enema.

I quickly attended to other matters, however, and was startled to see that what I passed was startlingly white. The beauty of that whiteness led me to wonder ...

... What if what came out of our intestines were always snow-white? Maybe that’s what’s wrong with the world. Our bodies’ byproducts are so disagreeable, perhaps this colors humankind’s entire behavior. After all, many negative words describe these products. For instance: He beat the crap out of him. She looks like crap. It’s a crappy situation. That’s a load of crap.

But what if we produced that unearthly barium white? Would people feel they had produced something beautiful? Would the characters of dictators, corporate raiders and generally irritable people change? Would they turn from evil beings into benevolent, kindly ones?

It could mean the end of war in the Sudan, and maybe the Taliban would have let women out of the house more often, and people wouldn’t want to torture anyone. Perhaps evil would never have existed: the Ku Klux Klan, murderers, the Holocaust.

And instead of negative associations, the end-products of food consumption would become positive ones. Gardening catalogs would feature new, pure white roses, called the Shit-White Rose. People would say things like, “what a beautiful, shit-white wedding gown!” And, “doesn’t she have the loveliest, shit-white complexion.”

Humankind would have to produce a new term for waste matter. Perhaps there could be a worldwide cooperative effort to come up with a name, headed by the United Nations or World Court. I wish I had a name to suggest, but I’m still busy recovering from that enema.

How about you? Had a barium enema lately? If not, you owe it to yourself to run right out get one. At the very least, if only for a little while, it’ll change your outlook on one thing.

Today's Question: What was the most uncomfortable medical procedure you ever had?
©Naomi Godfrey 2008