How to have a colonoscopy like a middle-aged man with high cholesterol

Plato said necessity was the mother of invention, a statement you will verify when the toilet breaks the day before your colonoscopy prep is scheduled to start, and you reinvent yourself as a handyman.

While you can barely drive a nail through a board, when this crisis strikes, you will swap out the flapper and fill valve and have that toilet humming like a Ferrari in less than an hour.

Your prep day will coincide with the summer solstice—the longest day of the year. You will spend the morning fasting and trying to decipher what, exactly, constitutes a “clear liquid diet” for the next 24 hours. Don’t buy your own lies; beer doesn’t count.

You will watch your wife devour a grilled chicken salad with Italian dressing for her lunch. Resent her. Growl along with your stomach. Seethe. Stay away from the basement and the beer in the fridge. Flush the toilet that you fixed. Feel proud.

At 4 p.m. you will wash down four laxatives with the first 64 ounces of a putrid concoction composed of Miralax and Lime Cucumber Gatorade. Name it “Puppy Tears.” Turn on “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” and wait.

The initial belly rumble will occur as Olivia Benson assures a teenage victim that she is “going to be okay.” Race to bathroom. Praise your plumbing skills while you become a human faucet[1].

Rinse and repeat for the next six hours. You will have a new understanding of the longest day of the year.

Wake at 3 a.m. after two hours of restive sleep and down the next batch of Puppy Tears. Watch “Top Gun” on cable between your races to the newly fixed toilet. Praise the flapper and fill valve. Ignore your hunger pains and nausea.

You’re a human faucet.

You will watch your wife sip an iced coffee as she drives you to the medical center. Resent her. Seethe again. Ask for a divorce.

While pretending to read a book as you wait to be wheeled on the gurney for your procedure, naked except for the hospital gown, you will glance at the saline IV a kind nurse placed in your arm and contemplate all that can go wrong—dying with a colonoscope up your ass.

When you’re finally wheeled into the surgery room and the anesthesiologist straps the oxygen mask to your face, the last thing you will remember is the doctor saying, “Enjoy your nap.”

Try not to fall in love with him. Your divorce is still pending.

When you awake and you’re being wheeled back to your room, the doctor will ask you how you feel. Groggy from the sedative, close your eyes and say, “Talk to me, Goose.”

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[1] While I’m not known for my discretion in this column, I will—in this specific instance—spare everyone the gory details.