[Culturechat] The Colossal Colon

[Faccea@aol.com]

There folows an "essay" by columnist Dave Barry of the Miami Herald. It is 
being posted to the culturechat to (1) hopefully cause a chuckle or two or 
even a rolling in the aisles, and (2) remind those of you over 60 of the real 
message given in article. I might add that I sent this to my mentor, 
gigli,saw over in CH. He responder with the following message:

  "I love Dave Barry in any shape or form. I think it would great for the 

culturechat. If not for the humor but to remind folks to get a 

colonoscopy done at least every five years after 60. A large number of 

chatters are over 60. As a physician who saw people in their thirties 

die of colon ca, I would defend your posting to any and all."

So here it is:

The View From Inside The Colossal Colon


So there I was, on hands and knees, crawling through a 40-foot-long, 
4-foot-high human colon.

It wasn’t a real colon, of course. No human has a colon that size, except 
maybe Marlon Brando, and I’m sure he has security people to prevent media 
access.

No. This was a replica. It’s called the Colossal Colon, and I’m not making 
it up. It was conceived by a 26-year-old cancer survivor named Molly McMaster 
as a way to get people to talk about their colons. This is a topic that most 
people don’t even like to THINK about. I sure don’t, and I bet you don’t. 
But if you never talk to your doctor about your colon, you might never get 
screened for colon cancer – the second leading cause of cancer death, though 
it’s preventable – and you could die, and then think how you’d feel.

That’s the idea behind the Colossal Colon, which is currently traveling 
around the nation on a 20-city tour (to see if it’s coming to your area, 
check Colossal Colon.com). I caught up with the Colon in South Beach, a part 
of Miami Beach known for sophistication and glamour. You can barely swing 
your arms there without striking an international supermodel, or a Rolling 
Stone, or, at the bare minimum, a Baldwin brother. I thought that the 
Colossal Colon fit right in.

The Colon was set up inside an air-conditioned tent, along with displays of 
helpful information, including a list of “DOs” and “DON’Ts” for visitors. 
Among the DON’Ts were: “DON’T stop for long periods of time inside of the 
Colossal Colon” and DON’T horseplay inside of the Colossal Colon.” I thought 
the wisest advice was: “DON’T leave your children unattended.”

If you’re a parent, there are few experiences more embarrassing that when you 
report a missing child to the police, and the officer asks you where you last 
saw little Tiffany, and you have to answer, “She was entering a giant colon.”

The Colossal Colon, shaped like a huge “C,” is made from plywood and 
polyurethane foam. It has been sculpted and painted to look very realistic, 
so much that I was frankly reluctant to crawl inside. I was worried about how 
far the carried the realism. I mean, what if you got deep inside there, and 
you were suddenly confronted, fun-house-style, by some guy wearing a costume 
depicting an educational colon-dwelling character, such as Tommy Tapeworm, 
or, God forbid, Fred Food? Fortunately, this did not happen. But the journey 
through the Colossal Colon is no walk in the park. You start out at the end 
labeled Healthy Colon,” and for a short while it’s a pleasant enough crawl. 
But pretty soon you start running into bad things: First, Crohn’s disease, 
then diverticulosis, then polyps, then colon cancer, then advanced colon 
cancer, and finally – just when you see the light at the end of the tunnel, 
and start to think you’re safe – you find yourself face to face (so to 
speak) with one of mankind’s worst nightmares: Hemorrhoids the size of 
regulation NFL footballs. A large signed warned the travelers to be careful 
and not slip on the “Preparation H.” 

Shaken? You bet I was shaken. It was with weak knees that I emerged from the 
end of the Colon (medical name: “The Geraldo”). There I was asked by a 
member of the Colossal Colon’s entourage (yes, it has an entourage) to sign a 
pledge promising to consult with my doctor about my colon. I signed the 
pledge, although to be honest, I did not consult with my doctor. I consulted 
instead with my friend and longtime medical advisor Gene Weingarten, who is 
widely acknowledged to be the foremost hypochondriac practicing in America 
today.

Gene told me that he’d been screened for colon cancer, and that the procedure 
was not nearly as bad as I had imagined. This is good, because I imagined 
that it involved a large, cruel medical technician named “Horst” and 70,000 
feet of chairlift cable. But Gene assured me that it’s nothing like that, and 
that they make you very comfortable (by which I mean “give you drugs”). Gene 
says they make you so comfortable that you’ll be laughing and exchanging 
“high fives” with Horst (make sure he washed his hands first).

So I’m going to get the screening, darn it.  I hope you do, too, assuming you 
actually get to see this column. I suspect some editors will, decide not to 
print it, because it contains explicit words that some readers may find 
distasteful, such as “Geraldo.” If you’re one of those readers, I apologize 
if I offended you. But remember: I’m writing this because maybe – just maybe 
– it will save your life.

Ha ha! Not really. I’m writing this because I’m a humor columnist, and there 
was a giant colon in town.

But get yourself screened anyway.


Dave Barry, Columnist for the Miami Herald