a series of unfortunate events

i've been in the rudest health over the last two or three years but this run of unhampered well-being has recently been blipped by unexpected stomach complications of unidentifiable origins which my doctor refers to as a 'diverticular disease' in my large intestine - in other words, he doesn't really know exactly what it is and the medical diagnosis seems to be a blanket term used to cover a whole gamut of sins that can apparently be treated by pills and high fibre liquids which i thought up until the last two weeks were usually only taken by menopausal and pregnant ladies

it required a gastroscopy and a colonoscopy - completely painless processes involving cameras on the end of tubes being stuck up or down two major orifices at opposite ends of the body - completely painless as i was unconscious during the procedure - my only concern was that i didn't snore too loudly as i'm one of those people whose snoring sounds like a hectic morning at the abbatoir

i've pointed out to various friends over the last two weeks that it's odd i should have paid nearly 2000 sing dollars for a complete stranger to insert foreign objects up my arse and down my throat when i know a number of people in various countries who would do it for nothing

actually the most painful part of the process was the waiting around for the procedure - i was under the mistaken impression that they'd give me some sort of pre-med anaesthetic before i went in and that i would experience that nice drug-induced semi-conscious state where you're fairly happy and dreamy and have conversations with items of stationery - unfortunately i had to wait around for two hours watching mediacorp channel five - after an hour of martha stewart cooking with david boreanez and another show involving some english bint helping an over-enthusiastic canadian family turn their basement into an interior design bad taste nightmare from hell complete with fittings which even 1970s MFI would have rejected as too cheap and
nasty, i was ready to open a vein and pass away on the plastic chair in my small kimono and
hospital gown which barely covered my knees and would have given many of the older chinese ladies, who were frequently being wheeled past me, coronaries if i hadn't kept my legs crossed

so i now have three months worth of pills to consume, enough fybogel, which, if it were all mixed together in one big tank, allowed to congeal and strewn in the path of an invading army would cause an immediate surrender and casualties similar to yul brynner's unfortunate soldiers when they were swamped by the collapsing waters of the red sea in the ten commandments, and a series of photographs of the inside of my intestines, which look like a combination of the interiors of the axon and zygon organic spaceships from early seventies doctor who

i was a bit disappointed as other people i know who have had this exploratory surgery were given a video cd of the procedure afterwards...

i was looking forward to posting mine on youtube