Gastroscopies, Colonoscopies, etc.

Up at around seven to head into Vincent's for a gastroscopy. My wife had to drive because I would be sedated. Gorgeous sunrise as we set out. 

I once made the mistake of opting to remain awake for the procedure (they assured me it would only take a minute): horrific, the longest minute I've endured, a tube fed down the throat into the oesophagus, while the interior of my body screamed NO! Like throwing up in reverse, a small taste of what I imagine water-boarding might be like. Probably a doddle, if you're a sword-swallower. 

Everything went fine and all seems well. I gave the specialist, Mr Maguire, a copy a little anthology of poetry called 'Getting Older', because I have a poem in it about a similar procedure (from the rear end), in which he has a cameo. I'm not sure whether he was startled or nonplussed. I don't know how many have written poems about colonoscopies. Perhaps I have started a sub-genre. Here's the poem in question. Make what you will of it:


Colonoscopy
 
What else should I write, arriving in the lounge
of late middle age? File this: magnesium citrate,
sweetened with aspartame, sounds like how it tastes.
 
‘Date of birth?’ ‘Are you on any medications?’
A crisp young intern ticks each box, rips off
the BP cuff, and is gone in a puff of soap.
 
Plenty of time to think about friends I know
who’ve been looked into. The same breezy corridor
from delivery room to where bad dreams transpire.
 
Soon now, good-humoured Mr Maguire
will redo the clumsy catheter, titrate the slow
milligrams of midazolam, and I’ll be
 
a map of the city, a tube train running through
the softest of soft tissue: what x-rays show
as loops and folds, a pillowcase of smoke.