Colon encounters of the third kind

As one turns a year past the half-way mark of one’s mid-30s, one begins to contemplate all the crap that has accumulated in one’s system since hair started to grow in one’s erogenous zones.

So what better way to celebrate 36 years, I thought, than to have a monster tube stuck up my rectum followed by a steady gush of warm water?

Quite an apt way to celebrate my chosen fart — este, art. After all, toilet humor is a proud tradition among Filipino comedians. How do I ever expect to enter the anals/annals of comedic folklore unless I show solidarity with the humor of Dolphy, Joey de Leon and Willie Revillame? How can I truly call myself knee-slapping funny unless I add is some scatological content to my joke diet?

For those who prefer that the only object that comes close to your sphincter is toilet paper, I recommend that you forego this week’s column and enjoy the work of my good neighbors Scott Garceau and Cecile Lilles as they are probably writing about topics that are more pleasant and less invasive. But for those who wish to celebrate my craft with me, allow me to explain what colonic irrigation is all about (and why it does not require any fertilizer). A colonic irrigation is an alternative medical procedure, much like an enema. (Wait, wait, what do you mean that’s not the right way to administer it? Yaya, kaya pala nabubulunan ako eh (Yaya, so that’s why I’ve been choking.) This involves shooting large amounts of water into an orifice from which you usually prefer to have things shot out of using a tube that is inserted into the rectum. (And, trust me, you do not want to get caught in the crossfire.) After your orifice has had its fill, the fluid is expurgated back through the tube along with the overstaying residents from your intestinal tract.

In short, it is like taking a dump in the opposite direction. 

And I highly recommend getting a colonic irrigation. A colonic has the effect of flushing out impacted fecal matter, toxins, mucous, parasites and various alien civilizations that have built up in your colon over the passage of time. A colonic is especially important if you’ve been storing up all the crap that’s been dished out from the start of the outgoing presidential administration.

According to some alternative health practitioners, if your colon does not completely eliminate the wastes that are squatting inside, this could lead to a plethora of health problems, from bad breath and migraine to acne, joint pains and irritable bowel syndrome (although I guess shooting water into your rectum could make it quite irritable as well). Can you just imagine what might happen if all of our world leaders had a colonic? We might probably achieve world peace. Or at least there would be less B.S. being reported on CNN and BBC.

But remember, my three (remaining) female readers (I hope), a colonic requires a lot of mental, emotional and fortitude. The mental fortitude requires that you purge your mind of any images that might have resembled colonic irrigation while you were surfing for free online porn. The emotional fortitude requires that you don’t scream like a straight man in a Saudi prison when you feel the tube being inserted into your rectum. And the spiritual fortitude requires that you do not think “God, oh God, why have you forsaken me?” in the middle of your colonic treatment.

So Much Ado Over A Little Poop

Once my hand was surgically detached from my yaya’s hands and then surgically reattached to my therapist’s hands, we were ushered into the heavily-fortified colonic room, a room which looked like it could survive several nuclear wars.

After the therapist explained to me several times that they could not perform the colonic irrigation while wearing underwear, I reluctantly peeled off all of my clothes and donned the stylish hospital gown that strategically exposed my buttock cleavage. 

Relax, I told myself. I’ve been Brazilian waxed. How bad could this be? Then I saw my therapist slip on a pair of thin rubber gloves, whip out a bottle of petroleum jelly and lather it all over a tube that resembled a weapon of mass destruction. My sphincter muscle involuntarily puckered up. 

“Is this your first time?” the therapist asked me in a pleasing bedroom voice as she pried apart my legs with a crowbar. “I refused to answer that question without legal counsel,” I politely replied.

After gently restraining me to the heavily fortified colonic bed, the therapist had me lie to my left side and slipped an adult diaper beneath my backside. “Just in case there are any accidents, Sir,” she explained. I smiled to myself. “Perfect,” I thought. “They’re just like the ones my wife makes me wear before we go to bed at home.”

“During the procedure,” the therapist said as she attached the weapon of mass destruction to a tube, “you are not supposed to push, to pee or to poo.”

“Can I call my yaya for moral support? She knows how to change my adult diaper.”

The therapist grimaced. “The machine will pump temperature-controlled water into you colon at a controlled rate. Do not resist the flow of water entering into your colon, then eventually you will feel the need to release.”

Whew, I said to myself. At least I’m good with releasing.

She lifted before my face the lubricated weapon of mass destruction. “This is the speculum.” So the weapon had a name, I thought. “When I insert the speculum into your rectum, make sure to breathe deeply and relax” Funny, that’s the same advice they gave me in the Saudi prison.

As she attached the tube to the colonic irrigation machine, I inhaled deeply and realized that I needed a change of adult diapers. Then she inserted the speculum into a region of my anatomy that I thought could only be explored during an alien abduction.

“Remember,” the therapist stressed as she fastened the speculum securely to my nether region, “the longer you can hold it, the better.” This is generally good advice for the nether region area, I thought.

“Are you ready to begin, Sir?” she asked as the machine hummed to life. “I will start the flow of water.”

I nodded almost indiscernibly.

The therapist opened a nozzle and a stream of warm water flowed where no warm water has ever flowed to before.

I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, and repeated to myself several hundred times: Getting a colonic doesn’t make me less of a man.

“Bottoms up!” the therapist joked. (No, she didn’t really say that. But I wish she had.)

HISTORY IN REVIEW

I am having water shot up my ass, was all I could think I could think of as the water built up like the Cold War had commenced inside my colon.

Although I felt a bit of cramping around my colon area, I still found myself holding it in for five minutes. I had internalized the mantra “the longer you can hold it, the better.” My urologist would have been proud. And despite a slight feeling of heaviness, I was still fine after 10 minutes of being pumped full of water. Apparently, I am very good at being full of it.

Finally, after there was enough water inside my colon to irrigate the Banaue rice terraces, I told the therapist I was about to blow. “Please do this quickly,” I begged. “I might explode into a pile of pus, bile and pink parts.”

The therapist asked me to switch positions from lying on my left side to lying flat on my back. But I found it rather difficult when you have something stuck in your behind. Which, in retrospect, has given me new insight into some of my former bosses.

When I finally released the debris into a tube, I felt a gush of warm water exit through my rectum followed by a stream of trapped gas that would probably solve our country’s power shortage. While the gush of recalcitrant fecal matter evacuated my system, the therapist gently massaged my stomach to dislodge any more recalcitrant matter that had been in my colon since prehistoric times. “There’s a lot of illegal squatters in there,” she joked.

“That’s because there’s a lack of political will,” I replied.

Since the heavily-fortified colonic room did not have cable TV, there was a viewing tube (yes, seriously) where you could fondly reminisce over the remnants of your last 10,000 dinners while the therapist gives you (optional) commentary. This was anthropology in action. The nurse excitedly pointed out the hardened fecal matter that zipped by (excitement was not an emotion I could feel at that exact moment). 

“See that dark and viscous piece of black gook coming out? That’s the accumulated cartilage of the meat you’ve eaten from before you became vegetarian.”

From before I became a vegetarian? I thought. That cartilage has stayed long enough in my colon to raise a family!

“And do you see that thick green radioactive green liquid that could eliminate all forms of life within a five-mile radius?” Her eyes grew watery while looking at the viewing tube. “That’s all the waste that you’ve written over the past five years in your column.” She wrinkled her nose. “Pretty foul stuff.”

After I had flushed out all the liquid from my colon (while keeping my masculinity intact, thank you) I could finally breathe easier (as easy as you could with a speculum up your butt). “Can you kindly detach me now so that I can still be on good terms with my colon on my 37th birthday?” I said in Ilonggo-inflected singsong. 

The therapist threw me a bemused look. “That was just the first irrigation. It only softened up your bowels,” she stressed while pressing down on the sides of my abdomen. “We need to do this several more times.”

If only my colon could scream.

The Aftermath

Two hundred and forty-seven irrigations and five adult diapers later, after flushing out several hundred lechons of Christmases past, undigested vegetable matter, and hardened fecal matter that had the potential of being weaponized, the therapist finally detached the speculum from my rectum and invited me to take a seat on the (thankfully) neighboring toilet bowl.

Great! I thought. An upright position from which I could purge my insides. My world made sense again. After performing a series of calisthenic exercises, I squirted out the excess water that had been left floating inside my colon from the irrigation. For a good 30 minutes, the general vicinity of the toilet bowl sounded like there was an exchange of gunfire followed by periods of uneasy silence. No wonder the colonic room was heavily fortified. 

Once I had cleaned my backside with industrial detergent, I first made sure that the therapist had not been caught in the crossfire, thanked her for her courage and awarded her a medal of valor. Then I dismounted that colonic table with an extra swing to my step. No doubt that extra swing was because I had shed a few pounds of impacted fecal matter. But it was probably as well because of the petroleum jelly. Then I sauntered back into the colonic room because I was still wearing the hospital gown that exposed my butt cleavage. 

Before I left, the therapist reminded me that I still needed to return for several more irrigations. It appears that my first colonic session had only worked off the upper part of my colon. But it would still take a few more sessions to fully rid myself of bad karma.

Sigh. If there is one thing that I have learned about growing a year older, it is this: No matter how hard you try, you can still be full of crap.