An Act of Will

I went in to have a CT scan of my pelvic floor.  The scan was pretty easy.  I didn’t even have to take off any clothes, just slide down my pants under a privacy blanket, and then this table I was on slid me in and out of a huge donut like thing.  But the night before and then again an hour before I went in for the scan I had to drink some strange, sticky liquid with barium in it.

The scan was downtown and after I had an hour before I had to go to the dentist, also downtown, to get a new cap put on.  Driving out to Goleta and back didn’t make sense, so I had breakfast at this place on De la Vina where I used to go. It was a good breakfast. But as I was finishing up, sitting there talking to the owner about the lousy economy, I felt down there in the lower regions as if I were on the verge of ripping wide open.  So I asked the guy if they had a restroom and went back there, and well, exploded.  It was most awful—the whole process was attended by horribly loud flatulence.  Sort of like a bomb going off.  I swear the walls shook. I don’t remember having experienced the like.

I wasn’t alarmed particularly.  I figured it had to be the barium drink.

But damn that gas was bad.  Driving down to the dentist, I kept firing off enormous rounds of this stuff, that had no smell to speak of—but was nonetheless explosive.

Being at the dentist in this condition was hard.  I didn’t want to embarrass myself, you know.  But there I was flat on my back as the dentist pulled off the temporary cap, and then had to scrape glue off the live tooth and stick the other one on, and spray cold water over the whole thing several times.  I don’t know but the dentist doesn’t generally give me a pain killer when he is putting on a cap.  He said something like, if it hurts, let me know.  But by then he is always already up to his arms in my mouth digging around in there. It hurt.  But what the hell was I going to do.  I didn’t know how long I could sit there in that condition.  So he just went at it as I sweated.

Man that took a hell of a lot of concentration.  Trying at one end of my Gastrointestinal tract (the end where the teeth are located) not to scream at being poked and prodded as I tried not to lose concentration about the considerable act of will required to keep the other end of the Gastrointestinal tract completely clamped down.  I have excellent sphincter control—but was hard pressed. 

Finally that was over.  I raced out to the privacy of my car to fire off a few rounds.

I was ruined for the rest of the day.