Tentatively Tasmanian

That heading above is from an actual advertisement in my GP’s office about getting your bowel checked for cancer. I think it’s clever and ranks up there with ‘do a deposit in your undies’ that was plastered all over Adelaide’s buses encouraging online banking.

Anyhoo, Pooing, Poking and Posting usually occurs when you’re fifty, but Craig and I were in Switzerland then, so stuff like being able to participate in elections, get your boobs squashed, bone density checked or poop examined passed us by.

As our return back from a dozen years in a different hemisphere, the medical challenges have been considerable. The elation at receiving a Medicare card after three phone calls, two rejected applications, and nine weeks! The not-so-thrilling visit to the annoying meerkat website to help us find some form of private insurance we could afford, minus the stuff no longer needed, like childbirth aftercare or (hopefully) dialysis.

Finding a GP? Oh my innocent, hopeful, just-arrived stupid dreamy little self…… That took seven phone calls to practices within a 20km radius before the eighth one kindly informed me that they were prepared to take on new patients. In six weeks’ time.

My concern was mostly about getting a prescription to continue my monthly self-injected migraine medication, and the long-awaited day of the appointment was the day the jab in the thigh was due. No problems, said the doctor, I’ve SMS-ed you the prescription to pop along to Chemist Warehouse and you’ll be sorted.

Oozing with skepticism after suffering the Swiss/French system of getting my hands on this amazing injection for over two years, I showed my phone to the girl at the counter. “Yep, we’ve got that. Do you want two to cover the next month as well?”

At the other end of the cavernous warehouse full of mouthwash, hair removal creams and protein powders, the bill came to $30. In Switzerland, the same medication cost 1200 CHF or, at today’s exchange rate, around $2055, of which 80% was covered (in a very, very slow approval process and even slower refund process). FIVE SHINING STARS for the Australian PBS system!

The next visit was to check out the weird swelling in my neck that sometimes resembled a rubber ring a toddler would use in the kiddy pool. I was referred for an ultrasound and a 16mm tumour was found. The GP referred me to the endocrinologist who informed me by a much photocopied standard letter that they would see me in February 2024. I’m a worrier by nature and a call to the GP resulted in a referral to a different endo who could see me in March. “Try not to worry too much,” she said, handing me a tissue as I burst into tears of self pity. “They’d be faster if it was cancer.”

Oh. OK then.

Finally the brochure from The Australian Bowel Cancer Association, with details of their screening test for folk over fifty. As per most things, the Swiss and French had not shown any concern as to the state of my faeces or the tubes that produced it, but facing turning 55 in a few months, the doctor urged me to send off for my test kit.

There’s a already some form of tumour in my thyroid, so I was keen not to discover another unwelcome visitor in my neglected sphincter.

Today was a ‘stay at home day’ with Fern the dog happily tired after a long walk and sunning herself in the garden far, far away from the terrors of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, and Craig sorting out the carnage of the workshop underneath the house.

There were stirrings. I grabbed the large white envelope and headed to the ensuite toilet. Bugger it, I needed to rezip and find my glasses to read the instructions. Oh, and a pen because I had to name and date the sample and complete a four page questionnaire. Yes, suffering and repulsed reader, I completed this whilst sitting on the bog with the papers on my lap.

Do a pee first, flush it and then lay a sheet of specially-designed paper down to catch your, erm, bum truffle.

I tend to have irritable bowel that likes to keep me on my toes. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to see the rather explicit Bristol Stool Chart, after wondering why a perfectly decent city in the UK needs to be in the title, you’ll then be diverted by the types and what is considered normal:

If you’re still reading this, I’ll confess that Type 4, or ‘normal’ is not something that I see very often, if at all. It’s normally type one, stubborn little rocks, or the extra special Types 6 and 7, usually emerging in a busy public restroom with others listening in or on long haul flights with others waiting to use the minute caca cupboard straight after me.

Well, today I laid down the special paper and waited. ‘It’ was there, wanting to emerge, but refusing to do so. I loudly informed Craig to use the other bathroom as I took Fern for a short walk around the neighbourhood, hoping the physical movement might persuade a movement of a much more personal nature.

I returned to the scene of the crime, picked up the pen to date my sample tube and waited. And strained. Success!

Alas, the Type 1 pebble dropped like the stone it was straight through the poo catching paper and landed right at the bottom of the bowl, taunting me with its miniscule size and ability to escape.

Reader, I reached in with my hand, placed it on the paper still remaining at the edge holding shape and took that little poke stick and got my sample. If you remember the first terrifying months of Covid when it swept through European towns and nursing homes and we were all sobbing through ‘Happy birthday’ as we soaped up our red, scaly hands and then wiped our home delivery groceries with DDT, let me assure that the clean up I did today has left me with hands resembling peeling pink tree bark and likely to glow in the dark.

Said sample is now in the fridge because the horror has not ended. They require a second sample as soon as possible after the first (no more than three days later) and it needs to stay cool. Where does one place a shit stick in a plastic bag that isn’t likely to terrorize the next poor soul reaching in for a beer or the margarine? I chose to rest mine against the jar of minced garlic.

The stench emanating from the bony, stinging claws that are my hands is not excrement related but a chemical cocktail making my eyes water from the hospital grade disinfectant, covid quality soap and repeating the process so often until my vertigo threatened to shove me onto the floor.

“It’s so simple and could save your life,” the brochure crowed. “Poo, Poke and Post.”

I’m dreading tomorrow and hope that I won’t Puke, Pass Out or Place my fingers on the Poo…….

Craig* has just emerged from the workshop for an iced coffee and, as part of the joy that is marriage to me, he was ‘treated’ to a blow by blow account of the entire ordeal.

His response? “I don’t care how clean your hands are, you’re not touching me!”