esrosedotblog

TREADMILL

Note: The following post is indelicately written. If you are squeamish about the ass or its environs perhaps you should move on to the next post.

I took a friend to have a colonoscopy this morning.

It is not my first time as a designated driver for this procedure (and endoscopies). I am getting rather good at it including the waiting room banter, if any. It is pretty quiet in there and for good reason I believe.

It is an assembly line. They dope everyone now. I guess they got tired of the drama.

So, when you recover you have enough 'joy juice' in your system that you are a hazard on the road and anywhere else for that matter.

They have it down to a science. Even the robotic welcome and sign in.

These 'girls' have seen it all. They make you sign that you got your insurance card back as well as your credit card.

Most people do not remember the ride home let alone the anxiety ridden entry into the maw. I can see people patting themselves down and not finding their valuables. First reaction, someone stole them.

It is all as sober as a church. More sober.

You get there at 20 minutes to the hour and, first come, first serve, the lineup into the operating room proceeds on a 20 minute cycle.

At some point your ass gets reamed, pictures are taken, polyps (if any) are removed, cancer is detected or not and you are returned to a recovery area where your designated driver can pick you up and also (presumably) calm you down if you think that your credit or insurance cards were stolen during your anesthesia.

I think that it is funny that they send you out a separate door so the people in the waiting room don't get to see the sort of splayed out state of the reamed.

In the past folks have been kind of hazy when I got to them in the recovery room. My friend was pretty coherent actually. He even claimed to remember the procedure and seeing the screen during it but his doctor kind of treated that insight as more of a hallucination. Why do docs have to be right all the time?

I liked the doc though. If I ever have to have this or that done I will go to him.

Now, listen to this one.

It is amazing but true.

The reason my friend is seeing this doctor is that he wants some internal hemorrhoids removed. The doc runs a surgery mill called The Hemorrhoid Institute. No prep, no pain, no recovery. In and out and you are done. Lasers or rubber bands.

He is British. Even has Brit teeth.

But here is the thing. To get his piles removed my friend had to get the colonoscopy or the insurance company wouldn't pay for the depilization.

Weird that they would want to actually add to the cost of work but somehow there is a thing in here that they don't want to spend money on work on a cancerous ass or something like that.

I have tried out the various rationales but have not quite put it together. Of course, searching for rationality in the insurance industry is fool's errand. I know that it has to be about money. Everything in it is. It could not be just compassion or scrupulous medicine.

Anyway, we got home and I will call later to see if he remembers anything of the ride home. Often, people seem perfectly conscious when you take them home but then you find out that they don't remember a bit of it.

It was fun. I will do it again if asked. I got a lot of reading done and didn't have to chit chat but once with another person who was waiting. I was able to assure her with my vast designated driver experience that all would be OK at the end. So to speak.

Labels: health, technology