Absolutely the ONLY time I will ever tell this story - it was embarassing then, still kinda is now!
It was before I had my stoma, and the quacks were eager to find out exactly how much ulceration I had, so they wanted to do a Barium Enema. Not my idea of a perfect Friday afternoon, but anyway.
I was fifteen I think, and REALLY self concious. I also had bad memories of B.E's, cos I had had one done when I was much younger. they had put me half to sleep, but I remembered some of it, and I had real problems sleeping for weeks after it.
But anyway - the staff were all in place to give me me the b.e, when I noticed that one of the young nurses was particularly cute. This made me even MORE uptight - if I could possibly be. So they've ahem, inserted the hose, and staretd putting the barium in. At the same time, they're pumping air in too, right? Well, I'm lying there thinking " hope to hell this hose is in correctly". So, they've got me lying on my side, saying we need more liquid in, with it comes more gas, right?
I'll cut a long, gruesome story very short at this point - all I'll say is that the hose wasn't in correctly, and that once they had pumped in 17,972 gallons of barium and eough gas to take me to Pittsburgh (Dean Martin RIP!), the whole lot came shooting out my arse with an almighty rip roaring fart, meaning that the docs, nurses (including my cutie) equipment AND walls were all tastefully decorated in a kind of creamy magnolia colour.
Two things happened after that - firstly, they scrubbed up and carried out the procedure again, making sure the hose was held in by two burly nurses - and secondly, I bumped into my "cutie" in the pub about three years later. She recognised me, and said that she had gone off the medical profession after that day! I felt so sorry for her - but we had a nice kiss at the end of the night!
Hope that hasn't scared any of you who may be due a barium enema, and I hope it maye have given some of you some light relief - this post has actually taken me about half an hour to write, because I keep laughing at the memory!