[warning: the following 100% true account of today's adventure contains detailed descriptions of
 things going into or coming out of parts of my body you don't want to read about.  The names of
 the people involved are not given because I forgot them all within seconds of being introduced.]
 
 

 You may recall that late Thursday night (Friday morning) I taste-tested the "Jar Jar Binks
 Monster Mouth Tongue Candy", a "Star Wars" toy with candy in the back of its mouth that you
 can only eat by French-kissing it.  And while I was attempting to eat one of these -- just for you
 people -- I was suddenly struck by massive diarrhea.

 Well, it's now late Sunday night, and I just got back from the hospital emergency ward.  This will
 be a long and twisty story detailing how I got from Jar Jar Binks to a life-threatening medical
 matter.

 I hadn't had anything else to eat right before the deadly Jar Jar tongue pop, except for a single
 blue gummi shark from the same candy store.  About three hours before, I had two chicken
 patties and a bowl of fresh chicken soup, and about eight hours before, I had some roast chicken
 with corn and noodles and beans (hey, Thursday is chicken night, Friday is REAL MEAT night!)
 but other than the shark, nothing was close enough to the consumption of my Jar Jar pop to be a
 possible cause of the diarrhea.  I'll rule out the shark because I have more of those sharks and
 they seem to be harmless constructs of colored
 gelatin, and besides, the diarrhea had red tongue-colored bits in it, not blue shark-colored bits.

 The diarrhea came in tidal waves every twenty minutes or so all night. Then it stopped.  And so
 did everything else.  After nothing else wanted to come out of my butt (no matter what I put in,
 including six White Castles, my favorite intestinal lubricant) I realized that I had a near-total
 intestinal blockage.  Whatever was stuck in there was irritating my intestine, causing the
 "paradoxical diarrhea" (the technical term for diarrhea caused by constipation.)  So, in the wake of
 Jar Jar, I was hit with a day of diarrhea, followed by a couple days of my abdomen getting bigger
 and bigger and making lots of noises.

 I tried the usual remedies, which you don't want to know about (two involved mineral oil, one of
 which involved drinking mineral oil) and absolutely nothing was forthcoming (although a little gas
 could squeeze around the blockage with great effort.)  My intestines were tighter than Penn
 Jilette's cummerbund.

 Over the weekend I considered going to the hospital to see if the doctors could roto-root away
 whatever was lodged in there, but of course that would be expensive (I don't have health
 insurance because Michael Moore isn't doing a very good job of making Hillary Clinton give me
 health insurance.)  I looked through the Yellow Pages for all the proctologists in the entire
 metropolitan area, and there was one (in Newton) and nobody answered their phone when I
 called on Saturday afternoon.  (Apparently The Last Surviving Proctologist can't afford an
 answering machine.)  I stood on my head and jumped up and down and bought one of everything
 that was cheap at the local drugstore.  But still the intestinal barricade would not yield.

 Finally, on Sunday afternoon, I took the subway down to Massachusetts General Hospital --
 where Michael Crichton was an intern when he was writing bad science fiction where he
 demonstrated he has no clue how things like bacteria work, and where the scientist in "Altered
 States" took the magical drugs that made him sparkle -- and checked myself into the emergency
 department.  (Contrary to expectations, Crichton's hospital does not have an NBC-style ER, they
 have an ED, which made me worry that Bob Dole was going to be handing out Viagra.)  On the
 way in I noticed the carefully-hidden plaque which said "THE CODE FOR FIRE IS 'DRILL',
 NEVER SAY 'FIRE'!"  (This is a violation of my First Amendment rights!  But fortunately it
 wasn't important because they didn't have a theater.)

 I talked to the triage nurse, who took my blood pressure and
 temperature (which was 97 Fahrenheit, which is low even for me -- I'm usually more like 98.2)
 and asked what was wrong.  I described in detail, miming actions with my hands and making all
 the sound effects. She asked me if I had any vomiting.  I said "Not yet."

 Then they told me to drop my form into the black bin at Admissions.  I made the mistake of
 putting my form on top, because they always take the one on the bottom first in an effort to take
 people in the order they came in -- next time I'll slip my form under the others.  They couldn't tell
 me whether or not I was eligible for Free Care because the guy didn't know where the poverty
 line was, so he had me fill out an application (I don't think I qualify...) and, amazingly, the
 hospital database knew my current address.  Which is odd, given that the only other time I was
 there (with the infected finger which drained itself during the four hours I was in the waiting room,
 so I walked out) I lived elsewhere.  I suspect that, because I walked out last time, it screwed up
 their database, because they started mailing me bills for my breast cancer and learning disability.  I
 never paid them, and the bills stopped coming, but I suspect someone at their collection
 department tracked down my address when I moved.  Anyway, the clerk at the Admissions desk
 printed out a blue hospital ID card for me (oddly, I didn't get the wristband promised in the
 "About Emergency Services" instructional propaganda leaflet.)

 After waiting in the waiting room a little while (only about five minutes), a nurse fetched me and
 bade me follow her down the blue line to the Multi(purpose) part of the ED.  (MGH's ED is split
 into Trauma, Major, Minor, and Multi, and I think they put you in Multi when they don't know
 whether you're Major or Minor.)  During the walk, she asked what was wrong with me, and I
 described it again, and she asked if I had any vomiting, and I said "Not yet."

 She had me take off my clothes, except for my underwear and socks (bringing to mind an old
 Morecambe & Wise comedy routine, but never mind.)  Then I waited in my room, Bay 10 of the
 ED Multi area, for a doctor.

 The first thing I noticed about the room was how messy it was.  The supplies were a little cluttered
 and piled, sort of like in the average suburban garage.  There was a Tootsie Roll wrapper on the
 floor (to taunt me?)  Most intriguing was the large red BIOHAZARD trash can with the bright
 yellow puddle around its base.  (I think it was Betadine or Phisoderm or one of those other
 doctors' hand cleansers that stains your skin the color of Vlasic brine.)  Somewhere within hearing,
 something was going "BOOP!" once every one and a half seconds.

 The desk clerk at the nurses' station brought me an ID card --
 identical in every respect to the one the Admissions clerk had given me, and my nurse came back
 and fastened a matching ID bracelet around my wrist.  (They used to use plastic bands fastened
 with adhesive strips to prevent you from taking them off until you got home, because everyone
 knows there are no scissors in hospitals.  The new ones are still uncuttable plastic, but now they're
 fastened with a one-way plastic snap that looks like a tiny translucent Altoids box.)

 A doctor came in, accompanied by two studious interns who also had stethoscopes, and one guy
 who didn't and just hung around in the corner.  (I think he just liked to watch.)  The doctor asked
 me what was wrong, and I told him, and he asked if I had any vomiting, and I said "Not yet."  (As
 in "I've read the medical literature and I know that if I eat anything more the poop will back up into
 my stomach and I'll throw up all over the place and go insane.)  He then proceeded to examine me
 -- while my underwear was still on -- while describing the process to the two interns with
 stethoscopes.  (He ignored the lurker.) All three of them put their microphones on my belly at the
 same time to listen to my borborygmi (bowel gurgles), listening for the evil
 "tweaks" and "whooshes" that signal a complete obstruction (which I didn't have because I could
 barely pass gas.)  He shook the gurney I was lying on to see if that caused any discomfort, he
 pressed different areas of my belly (presumably to see if my leg started rotating like a dog's), and
 then tapped every spot on my belly to see if there were any air pockets that sounded "hollow."
 He announced that all he was getting from my belly were "dead noises", which was apparently
 good, although it included a word that should have been substituted with something like "drill".  I
 hoped that he wasn't going to ask all the interns (except the slacker) to shove their fingers up my
 butt to look for the impacted feces (which is what the medical literature says to do) but they let me
 keep my underwear on the whole time.  They left as a group, and the slacker thanked me for
 letting him watch me, then the two actual interns thanked me.

 Next came more waiting, followed by a visit from another doctor.  He asked me what was wrong,
 and I told him, then he asked me if I had had any vomiting, and I said "Not yet."  He poked my
 belly a few times and ordered Upper GI films of me, then left.

 Here's where the big adventure truly began.

 An orderly came and wheeled my gurney down the hall (through about six pairs of double doors
 that had to be buzzed open -- they don't just bang through them like on TV, darn it) to Radiology.
 I marveled at the fact that the moment you arrive, because they have to treat everyone the same so
 as not to have to remember which patients can walk and which can't, they automatically slap you
 on a gurney, then they put the crib-like sides up to remind you that you shouldn't get out and try to
 go anywhere under your own power.  They wheeled me down the hall into Radiology, where I
 encountered an X-Ray technician and a wacky senior X-Ray technician.  (He was the only "funny"
 doctor I met that day, thankfully.  Humor about people's innards belongs on the Internet, not
 around the actual innards.)

 They took an X-ray of my abdomen while I was standing up (with my back against this glass panel
 with half-size geometric lungs shaped like Utah drawn on it) and another of my abdomen lying
 down.  (Both X-ray machines were made by Siemens, so if all my sperm suddenly mutate, watch
 for the semen vs. Siemens lawsuit.)  The X-ray machine's
 articulation joints squeaked as the "funny" technician maneuvered it, and he said, "You think it
 needs oil?" and I said "I think I need it more."  He didn't laugh either.

 NOTHING IS FUNNY IN A HOSPITAL, WHERE ONLY LAME JOKES ARE
 ALLOWED!

 While they were X-raying me, they stuck one of those little plaques behind me with lead "L" and
 "R" markers on it so they could tell which way my guts where facing when they were
 photographed.  They did not make me take my underwear off, despite the fact that I was wearing
 BVDs whose waistband was presumably changing the shape of my belly a little, and was probably
 at least as optically opaque as the farts they were photographing.

 After two exposures, let me lie around in Radiology for a few minutes while they developed the
 X-rays (in case they didn't come out right because my stomach blinked when the flash went off,
 they wanted to keep me around to pose some more) and then when they were ready another
 orderly came to take me back to Bay 10.

 This orderly wasn't too skilled at pushing my gurney (he kept bumping things) and he spent the trip
 muttering to himself constantly, in a monologue consisting mainly of swear words.

 As we entered the ED, I saw a doctor saying into a telephone, "This is (name) in Major.  One of
 the patients in Seclusion got out of one of her restraints..."  Apparently they refer to the loony
 lock-down area as "Seclusion", so never ever check yourself into a sanitarium to get some
 seclusion.

 Arriving at Bay 10 again, I waited a little while, then the second doctor (the one without the gaggle
 of interns) came back to ask if I'd had my X-rays.  I said I had, and he disappeared to go read
 them (they didn't let me see them.)  After a while, he came back and said that, basically, the
 X-rays said I was full of shit.  I thought everyone on the Internet knew that, but apparently they
 wanted to check that my intestine didn't have a bow-tie knot or a gerbil in it.  (I bet they thought
 "We better check everyone, JUST IN CASE we actually find a gerbil someday, because that
 would make us famous!")  Of course I had figured all along that it was just impacted feces in the
 lower rectum (I mean, I could feel 'em not coming out when I tried to poop) but you know how
 doctors are when you self-diagnose:  If you "present" with a bleeding forehead, they give you
 stitches and check for concussion.  If you "present" with a bleeding forehead and say "I THINK I
 ALSO HAVE A CONCUSSION BECAUSE MY BRAIN HAS A LARGE OBVIOUS DENT
 IN IT," then they will refuse to check for concussion.

 (I will go down to the Medical Records office to buy my X-rays if you people REALLY want to
 see my intestines on a Web page.  Hmm, if so, they should have clickable hot spots.)

 The doctor left, and I waited a while, then the nurse came back to tell me that the doctor had
 ordered a laxative and "some enemas" for me. "Some"?  It would have been more reassuring if
 they had said "a couple" or "a few" or "several" or "a number with less than eight digits" rather than
 "some", which left open the possibility that they wanted to give me A MILLION BILLION
 TRILLION ENEMAS.

 (So the guy drops dead on the stage and someone yells "Is there a doctor in the house?" and as
 he's running to the stage this matron in the back yells "GIVE THAT MAN AN ENEMA!"  All the
 time he's examining the guy who dropped dead, she keeps yelling "GIVE THAT MAN AN
 ENEMA!" Finally, the doctor yells back, "Lady, this man is dead!  An enema won't help!" and she
 says, "WELL, IT COULDN'T HURT!")

 Anyway, she told me that the laxative was something I would allegedly enjoy -- "it's like a soft
 drink, it's a sparkling laxative."

 OH NO!  CITROMA!

 For those of you who don't know, Citroma is The Sparkling Laxative, a magnesium citrate
 solution sold in pint bottles at drugstores
 everywhere (sometimes in generic form, but it always comes out of the Citroma factory because
 the bottles always have that same logo stamped into them.)  It comes in four flavors, all of which
 taste "citrus"-ish, because it's magnesium citrate, which is a relative of citric acid. Citric acid is
 what makes candy taste lemony and sour (think of Sour Patch Kids);  adding a sodium or
 magnesium atom to make a salt gives you either sodium citrate (the chief flavoring of Orbitz and
 Alka-Seltzer) or magnesium citrate (which tastes the same, except with more laxative effect than
 even Orbitz.)

 God was punishing me again.

 First God punished me for buying a "Star Wars" toy by making it give me diarrhea and an intestinal
 obstruction which would hospitalize me.

 Then, for making Citroma the first item I put on my "Don't Eat This" Web page and saying mean
 things about it, God punished me by making me drink Citroma.  In my underwear.

 (HOW THE CITROMA GOT INTO MY-- sorry.)

 The nurse left, and I waited and waited for my Citroma.  I waited over half an hour for that damn
 Citroma.  I was mentally yelling "WHERE IS MY CITROMA?", which may perhaps be the only
 time in my life I will ever WANT Citroma.  I was about to open up all the sterile bandage
 packages out of spite when she came back with a plastic cup with a pint of sparkling laxative, with
 crushed ice and a bendy straw.  For the next half-hour, I sat there sipping Citroma through the
 straw as trauma cases were wheeled past for my amusement.

 (It wasn't actually Citroma but some hospital-made solution of straight magnesium citrate, because
 it didn't have any food coloring in it to try to fool me into thinking it was "lemon" or "lemon-lime" or
 "orange" or "cherry", though it tasted exactly like lemonoid Citroma or Orbitz. Well, okay, it didn't
 have lumps, so call it Orbitz without the zitz.)

 At one point, I heard them page Security, summoning them to Seclusion with "more restraints".  A
 little while later, I saw them taking the mystery patient from Seclusion down the hall to be
 X-rayed.  Remember Anthony Hopkins in "Silence of the Lambs"?  Now imagine he's sedated so
 that he's reduced to Dom DeLuise in "Silence of the Hams".  As they wheeled this guy past on a
 gurney, they had a sheet covering him from just below the eyes down to his shins, but his eyes had
 an interesting mixture of evil and sedation.  The sheet was presumably to keep the rest of us from
 staring at the major bondage gear, whatever it was -- and I could see that his feet were encased in
 some sort of clear plastic.  I figured the guy was in a big Zip-Loc mummy bag or
 something.  Also probably a disposable hospital straitjacket made out of Tyvek with the same
 closure as the wristbands.

 An orderly was pushing Mr. Evil's gurney, and one Security man was in front and two in back.
 They had walkie-talkies, tan slacks, navy-blue blazers, and rubber gloves.  There's nothing that
 conveys "totalitarian state" as much as a uniformed security officer with rubber gloves. (I'm sure
 Disneyland has these guys.)

 A little later, an orderly brought back the gurney without the evil patient or the sheet -- and it did
 indeed have big leather wrist-straps attached to the side rails.  Shortly thereafter, a guy in work
 clothes ambled in with a double handful of wads of leather straps (looked a full set of horse tackle
 for humans) and asked them where to stow the restraints, and a staffer directed him to place them
 in "the red bucket over there".  So next time you're in Seclusion, watch out -- they've got buckets
 of bondage gear!

 (I have no clue if the guy was a criminal or just a psychotic person, but there were lots of restraints
 involved, even more than in that photo of Mary Tyler Moore whipping Dick Van Dyke.)

 I finished the Citroma and waited a while longer for the nurse to come back.  I read my charts that
 were lying on the counter.  Someone had rated me on the Coma Scale:  I got high marks for
 having my eyes open, being able to carry on a conversation, and being able to move.  They had
 even checked off the size of my pupils and the number of
 respirations per minute.  I think maybe the triage nurse did this clandestinely while she was asking
 me whether or not I had had
 vomiting.  Or maybe they just guessed at some point after they decided I was normal.

 Eventually the nurse came back with two small bottled enemas (the squeezable kind you would
 expect to contain hot dog toppings) which she referred to as "Fleet's" enemas.  First of all, there's
 no "'s" in "Fleet" brand enemas, and secondly, these were a different brand.  That was fine by me
 because I give enough money to Fleet whenever I use my ATM card at Fleet Bank.

 She directed me to go down the hall to the bathroom and give myself an enema.  Or two.
 (Couldn't hurt.)  I was amazed that I had waited all this time for a bottle of Citroma (which you
 can buy anywhere for $1.59) and a pair of boxed laxatives (which you can buy anywhere -- and I
 had, over the weekend -- for $2 each) which they weren't even going to administer
 professionally.  Basically, I was paying them to let me use their bathroom to do the same stuff I
 could have done at home. Heck, if I'm going to pay to get an enema (please have no illusions that I
 wanted one) I want one administered by someone who's good at it and who gives top-notch,
 super-gigantic, electrically-heated enemas, not a little squeeze bulb I have to jam into my own ass
 by feel.  (The directions on the box tell you to lie face down [on the bathroom floor?] and have
 someone else do it.  They also say "FOR RECTAL USE ONLY" in case you're REALLY
 stupid.)

 So I put some water up my butt and then the water came out, and a little other stuff came out too.
 Not much, but I think the Citroma was starting to soften my stools a little.  As well as making my
 stomach hurt.  I mean, it was a full pint of citric acid.  It was like I had just eaten 500 Sour Patch
 Kids.  (It was pretty hard to choke down all that Citroma.  And keep in mind that it tastes like
 Sour Patch Kids plus salt.)

 The bathrooms didn't smell like licorice (world's most annoying
 disinfectant?) the way they had on my infected-finger time-waster visit.

 Anyway, I ambled back to Bay 10 and waited forty-five minutes for the nurse to reappear.  I told
 her I had had only minimal doodies and that all the White Castles and curry and meat loaf and
 other stuff from the past three days were still in there somewhere.  She relayed this to the doctor,
 came back, and said they were sending me home because it looked like the Citroma was starting
 to work and would probably kick in later.

 She gave me another enema (in a box) to take home and also wrote out a treatment plan for me:

 1.  Buy some Colace (an over-the-counter stool softener) and take it. 2.  Buy some Dulcolax
 suppositories (over-the-counter laxatives of the most annoying kind) and use one in the morning if
 nothing's happened. 3.  Buy some Metamucil (an over-the-counter blend of 99% tree bark and
 1% Tang) and take some every day for the rest of my life just in case this ever happens again. 4.
 Use the boxed enema (which is called "Fleet's" in the written instructions).

 So I put on my clothes (except my underwear, which I had never taken off -- odd that they made
 me take off all the clothes that didn't cover the part of my body that had the problem) and
 followed the blue stripe on the floor to the exit.  On the way out, I noticed that the Pediatric
 department had smiling chimps painted on the door.

 (Elapsed time during hospital visit:  Four hours, same as it took for them not to treat my infected
 finger.  What I got for my time and a big bill:  Three enema kits and the world's most expensive
 glass of Citroma.  And a requirement to buy three more things.)

 I went down the street to the 24-hour CVS drugstore to buy the stuff, under the assumption that
 maybe I should try using some of it.  They had a generic version of the Dulcolax bullets (I always
 get the cheapie ones), but not generic orange Metamucil (who would want the unflavored sawdust
 kind?) or the liquid version of Colace (I detest pills, and can only swallow them by accident, i.e. I
 can swallow whole Life Savers, I have never successfully swallowed a little pill.)  The pharmacist
 was kind enough to place an order for some of the liquid Colace for me (to arrive in 24 hours) but
 I didn't want to wait that long, so I left the order and looked elsewhere for liquid Colace.  (Hey,
 she didn't take my phone number, so she can't make me pick it up tomorrow.)  I checked another
 CVS down the street, which was also missing the same stuff.  So I took the subway to the Back
 Bay, which has other kinds of drugstores and was on the way home.

 During the walk from Copley Station to the 24-hour Walgreen's (the only place that has
 non-cheez White Castle burgers, yay!) I stopped at the Store 24 there, because I'm seldom in any
 Store 24s, particularly this one, and I wanted to look for interesting snack foods.  I saw that they
 had the blue flavor of Whipper Snapple (one of the many fake Orange Juliuses flooding a
 saturated market), and because I love anything that's blue flavor, and the blue Whipper Snapple is
 incredibly rare, I bought four.

 (The blue Whipper Snapple is "Black And Blue Berry" flavor, allegedly. Whipper Snapple's
 ingredients, oddly enough, always include rosemary in each flavor.  I have no idea what it's for,
 and it would certainly ruin it completely if you could taste it.  They all basically taste like
 watered-down white grape juice with a few drops of milk.)

 The store had about 30 bottles of the rare blue Whipper Snapple, and about three of each other
 flavor, so I'm obviously the only person in town who is willing to drink this stuff (it's not one of my
 favorites, but it's rare so I wanted it.  Besides, I was out of juice and
 juice-like items at home.)  Obviously the guy behind the cash register was aware that the Store 24
 just couldn't get rid of the blue ones because when he saw me putting four on the counter he
 exclaimed "Oh, thank you!"

 Then I went down the block to the Walgreen's drugstore, where they had the liquid Colace and
 generic orange Metamucil, both of which I bought, along with some frozen White Castles (a much
 more palatable laxative than Citroma.)

 When I got home and opened the liquid Colace, it said that to prevent throat irritation it MUST be
 taken mixed with juice.  WAAH!  ALL MY BLUE DRINKS ARE GONNA BE
 LAXATIVE-FLAVORED!

 Still, they taste about a skillion times less salty/citricy than Citroma.

 I tried some of the Metamucil.  Do senior citizens actually like the taste of this stuff?  It's a really
 annoying texture: chaff slurry. With a sort of cardboard flavor that the Tang can't mask.  I think
 maybe I'll just get my fiber from actual food instead.  Besides, this problem will likely never recur,
 unless I make the mistake of buying more "Star Wars" candy.

 Oh, and after you get three days' worth of White Castles and other yummy foods out of you
 through the cleaning power of Citroma, the White Castles have turned into something that could
 pass for coffee.  If you don't taste it.

 So the blockage seems to be clearing up, and I'm back to diarrhea.  But unlike the original Jar
 Jar-induced diarrhea, now it's got fewer lumps than Orbitz.  Because Citroma is Orbitz without
 the zitz.

                                             -- K.

 If you learned only one thing from this article, I hope it's the word "borborygmi".