An intimate confession of internal affairs

Max Gross

28 October 2026

I had never seen a photo of the inside of my bowel before.

It looked rosy and smooth, with a lovely, pristine sheen and clean as a whistle (whatever that means). No polyps. No Big C. No drama. No worries, mate! My stress level returned to normal (Whatever normal means).

On Monday night I had eaten my last solid meal for 41 hours: pasta primavera. On Tuesday afternoon I got a phone call from Day Surgery nurse Gabrielle who thought I was scheduled for a gastroscopy.

Spooked by the error, I explained that I was supposed to have a colonoscopy. She seemed surprised, said she would “sort this out” and get back to me. Fifteen minutes later she phoned again, the matter apparently settled. I was booked in for 11:00 Wednesday.

For the past fifteen years, every year or two, I take advantage of the Australian government’s National Bowel Cancer Screening Program that allows punters aged 45 to 74 to screen for bowel cancer using an easy-peasy no-brainer test at home. There is no charge and no big deal. Poke your shit with a little stick and mail it off to the pros. They check it out and you either get the all-clear or they catch it early enough for modern medicine to knock it on the head, quick smart. There is no need to die horribly from something preventable so, my advice? Just do it. Your taxes at work!

I drank the first of three unpleasant doses of sodium picosulphate and lots of water – liters of it throughout that day – with the last big nasty glassful glugged around 23:00, by which time I was shitting nothing but ozone, felt weak as a kitten and dazed as a drunk. Almost no sleep overnight.

By 09:30 the next morning, bellbirds pinging like mad, I was plodding down the road to the bus stop, lugging a small backpack and a change of clothes, feeling light-headed, hoping I wouldn’t fall over. After a rattling, bumpy bus ride through the green hills and fields of Bega valley – picturesque dead roos along the roadside, as usual – I got to the South East Regional Hospital just outside exotic bogan Bega by 10:50.

After half an hour of having my head done in by the prattling inanity of some cheesy-grinning American TV chat show in the Day Surgery waiting bay, a nurse called me in and went through most of the same questions I had been asked at the main Admissions Desk. When she began talking about the colonoscopy AND gastroscopy I was about to undergo, I was just dazed enough to remain calm and point out that this was the second time this error had been made: NO gastroscopy, lady!

Shuffling through a surprisingly chunky-looking file on me, she located Dr Bragg’s initial paperwork and we both attempted to decipher the gastroenterologist’s scrawl, the reason for the error soon obvious. That settled, I was tagged at wrist and ankle and sent off to strip and change into one of those stylish, no-nonsense hospital gowns with ties in the back and a cap of blue gauze to cover my hair. No photographs, please! After stowing my gear in a locker, I was put to bed where the nurse then gamely struggled to fit my big feet with long surgical stockings and a pair of bright red non-slip socks.

I was covered in blue blankets and rolled into a room where Jake, a chatty young anesthetist whose gaze always seemed disconcertingly fixed on the ceiling or wall, fitted me with a syringe delivery port. He repeated questions I was asked earlier. Flipping through the same file as the first nurse, he made a similar comment to last week’s initial anesthetist check regarding the diabetes diagnosis: “That’s nothing”. He didn’t think there was any need for “intervention” either. Chalk it up anyway and add to the list.

Then he asked about alcohol, as they always do. By now I was feeling quite Zen and blithely admitted usually binging on four or five liters of rough red once a week but not always. I quite like variety and sometimes alternate between beer, whiskey, rum, vodka and tequila, or variations of all the aforesaid. The spice of life, right?

We had a pleasant chat about boozing and he gave me the standard words of wisdom, with the addendum “It’s really a decision only you can make”.

“I try not to drink,” I fudged, “but never last more than a couple of weeks”.

He said “I better give you a bit extra then because you’ll have built in resistance. Don’t worry. You won’t feel or remember a thing”.

“Great!” I joked, “It’ll be just another Saturday night”.

Turned out Jake’s girlfriend was Czech and we talked about Prague pubs. The last time I was in Prague was in the late 1980s, when Reds ruled the land. Is U Fleku even there anymore, I wondered? Turns out it is. But I can’t afford to travel that far nowadays.

A couple of doctors came in, one clearly the boss – Dr Yuval – and the other one tasked to slide a camera up my arse. So what happened to Dr Bragg, whom I initially saw and to whom I had forked out my hard unearned cash? Did I mind who conducted the procedure, Yuval asked. “No at all,” I replied. “I’ll be facing the other way anyway.”

Dr Yuval looked and sounded stern as he asked why I had delayed two years to get this done. I shrugged and said I forgot about it, neglecting to mention my penury. Sure, Medicare covers the actual public hospital procedure but not the initial or any subsequent consultation. It had cost me a couple of hundred dollars to see the now missing Bragg. What ever happened to her? Was it something I said? Yuval looked unimpressed. Actually, he looked like Trotsky.

By midday I was in a room surrounded by bewildering technology and half a dozen kitted-out nurses, doctors and Jake. A nurse glued three EEG points onto my chest and fussed with untangling cables. There was a video screen, the teensy camera showing the bench top upon which a nurse fiddled with the endoscope at the end of a narrow cable about two alarming meters long.

Everyone seemed relaxed, amiable – just another day at the office – and I felt quite phlegmatic myself. Zen! Everyone said hi. I said hi back. A nurse asked me how I was feeling. I said I had felt worse. Smiles all around. I was thinking: this will be a walk in the park. Or a snooze on a park bench. Or something.

Jake asked me to turn to my right side and bend my knees, then placed an oxygen mask over my face and gave me a pillow to hold. Did he really say “Pretend it’s Emma Thompson”? He plugged a tube into my syringe port and I watched a clear fluid flow down. I felt somebody’s reassuring hand on my shoulder, patting me. It suddenly made me nervous. “Let me know when we reach Mars,” I said.

I remember feeling drowsy rapidly, everything fading away fast. When I opened my eyes I was in a large post-op ward with a couple of other bed-ridden punters on hold, several nurses at various tasks, and other staff walking in and out at odd intervals. I was still clutching the pillow Jake had given me.

A clock on the wall showed 12:50, which means I was in and out of the colonoscopy carnivàle within the hour. By 13:15 I was feeling alert and hungry but enjoying the passing procession of diverse hair-coverings. By 13:30 a nurse – Gabrielle again – had brought me a bottle of water, a cup of coffee, and a packet of four little sandwich triangles which I devoured despite (or because of) the chicken and salami. Some vegetarian I am!

I cracked a joke about getting a video of the preceding proceedings and she opened my file to show me the rosy hi-res snapshot (Thank Cthulhu that disgusting rash around my upper thighs and arse cleared up weeks ago). By then I was feeling hale, hearty and ready to leave, but an overnight bed was being prepared for me because I had nobody to “escort” me home. Apparently it was “hospital policy” that I have a post-op escort.

Chatting with one of the nurses who had eventually wandered over after catching my eye, I learned that I could in fact discharge myself; the hospital could not hold me against my will.

By 15:00 I was sharing a room with a bloke suffering from his second appalling knee reconstruction but, before the charming charge nurse could coax me into bed (alone, not together, I hastily add), I said I wanted to sign myself out. There was a bus back to my bunker on the coast at 16:00. She seemed surprised; she had already scribbled my name on the adjacent whiteboard. She said it was inadvisable for me to leave unaccompanied but I – nicely but firmly – insisted. Turning back to the whiteboard she wrote “Would like to go home this PM please” and off she wiggled to seek approval from a higher authority.

By 15:50 I was outside in the sunshine at the bus stop. By 17:00 I was in the Sapper Club in the comatose seaside township of Merimbula (where the Zimmer frame meets the surf board), enjoying a chilled mug of Guinness and flushing money down the voracious slot machines. I won and lost, won and lost, had a couple of pale ales, won and lost, gave up the chase at $50 down, went next door into Woolwarts for a six-pack and food, then plodded home, warmed up a frozen pizza, drank two beers, sleepily watched a movie I cannot remember, and went to bed, perchance to dream.

So, internal affairs were resolved and I was not not dead yet, but I realise now that Jake the anesthetist didn’t say Emma Thompson. He said Emma Stone.