The Blog

So apparently Cologard marketing is using a talking box to convince people to use their services to screen for rectal cancer. It even has a smile as it speaks to your inner child.

It sounds like Cologard is on the right path trying to lighten the load of what it actually is and how you interact with it.

So when my physician gave me a choice between pooping in a container in the privacy of my own bathroom or having a stranger dig around with his finger inside me like he’s looking for his car keys, I told him that I wasn't ready to make this Sophies Choice of a decision so quickly. After weighing the pros and cons, eventually I settled on what seemed to be the more compelling atrocity: the Cologard "party in a box" colon cancer screening kit.

I admit that part of my rationale was little more than, "Why not?" It had been years since the last time I intentionally pooped in a KFC bucket and I wasn't getting any younger. He carefully explained the sampling procedure with the same dexterity and tenderness usually reserved for letting someone know they need to take a shower. Luckily for me, the physician with whom I entrust my life knows as much about my non-standard sense of humor as he does about my balls. He punctuated his professional demeanor by cryptically telling me, “Now remember: just a "fun-size"/Halloween Snickers: Not the whole thing.” I chuckled and held my head high as I was feeling particularly confident that moment after a big lunch, a cup of coffee and a 45 minute wait in his lobby.

After receiving the Cologard box in the mail, it sat in my bathroom for way too long. During my visits to the potty, the box and I would stare each other down and give each other those non-verbal cues that communicate all the depraved things that we were going to do to each other: "I want you inside me; not all of you, just a fun-size Snickers amount." The box always pushed things a step too far with the graphic detail of what he was going to do once I filled him up and sent him away. We both knew it was going to happen eventually, but I was always too self-conscious about whether I could even please him at my age. It's a strange psychology how low self-esteem in your youth can impact you for the rest of your life. Every time I went number 2 I looked at the box and felt defeated. It reminded me of those learning experiences in my formative years when I screwed up and had to deal with disappointing someone. As a youth, I rarely ever felt like any of my accomplishments were good enough. In adulthood, it didn't even matter whether the fruits of my labor were berries of either the schnoz or dingle variety. Logically, I understand that even if I made a poo that looked like a Halloween gourd, I wouldn't be judged for it. I can only reason that it's the guilt I carry from growing up Catholic and from judging all those gas-station-bathroom treasures that seem to run the gamut from "OMG, I think it's evolving and trying to crawl out" to, "Wow. I waited 5-minutes for you to finish and now I'm unsure if I should flush it or name it George, and pick it up and hug it and squeeze it."

At least those were all anonymous judgements. In this case my details will be on full display. It's like being the only one in the beauty pageant with a rose made out of toilet paper, finger nails colored with M&M's and eyeshadow made from crushed Skittles. We didn't have a lot to work with on my cell block. Anyway, sushi and pasta makers spend years perfecting their art and here I had spent my whole life making predominantly, non-noteworthy poos. Combined with the fact that they don't allow you to just fish the best one out of the toilet bowl, whack it with a little baseball bat and send it to them makes it even more nerve wracking. For what this kit is, it has already taken a lot more out my brain than it was going to from my butt.

I'm no artist, but with a time, skill and effort a beautiful piece of pottery can be made from a lump of clay and a spinning wheel. I didn’t have a spinning wheel but I do know how to make a fairly tight Kegel. "That should help for something," I thought, as I considered whether to make a Vision Board for inspiration.

My thoughts then turned to the lucky recipient. I had so many questions:

Would they be beaming when they opened my cornucopia?

Do they still get that Pavlovian pang of excitement when the delivery guy arrives?

Are they reminded of the days when they were children and eagerly chased the ice cream truck?

Or have they become numb to all of it?

Do they still sing the Oompa Loompa song when opening the boxes?

I imagined a team of technicians in lab coats at Cologard with some holding a loupe to their eye and inspecting samples like they were gemologists. I pictured a few of them even thinking about their life choices. I couldn't disappoint them by giving them something that wasn’t as pretty and proportional as I would like to project.

It was a bit of a relief when I finally read the instructions in detail and realized that the preservative solution likely wasn’t going to preserve it like a hot dog in resin or Rasputins dong.

The preservative was mostly just to make sure it stayed fresh since nobody likes a stale one. Another few weeks went by, during which I taught myself to be more aware of my bowels, so I could actually walk slowly and intently to the bathroom to prepare for the experience versus speed-jumping on the toilet like a military hero saving his squad from a live grenade.

I had already scheduled the 6-month follow-up doctors appointment so it was now poo or die time. One evening when I came home from drinks, I must’ve been feeling particularly confident. I strutted into my bathroom, opened the Cologard package (again) and started prepping. I looked in the mirror, asserted myself and said, “You Is Kind, You Is Smart, You can even poop in Tupperware.”

My feigned confidence faded quickly. You really don’t realize all the physics we take for granted in our daily lives. We instinctively know how to walk with a full cup of coffee without spilling because our brains are processing crazy amounts of data from our eyes, ears and muscles to make it happen.

And even though I’ve had the same butthole for 50 years and have a pretty good general idea of where it is, nobody had prepared me to have to use it like a sniper. It’s not until it’s time to create a stool sample that you realize your butthole has all the speed and precision of a janky claw game at Chuck E. Cheese, only instead of getting a stuffed animal for all your efforts you get a jar of poo.

So I’m sitting on a toilet, bending my aching back so far forward to try and get a good view of my butthole that I naturally start wondering how anyone could possibly auto-fellate themselves and enjoy it, and then I started to let ‘er rip. My own Butterfly Effect began to take effect. Taking a crap in a Koozie may sound effortless but the reality is different.

First, it was clear my poo-chopper needed some time on the whetstone. Ginsu, it was not. It was quite dull and didn’t cut like I imagined it would from watching all those “How It’s Made” episodes.

Then I was surprised and annoyed at the realization that I’ve romanticized the operation and speed of my flaps. Years of watching Star Trek is what I blame. There was nothing precision about the doors to my bridge. Rather than the immediate action of a partition going up during a bank robbery, I was instead greeted with something more like closing an old electric garage door when your remote has a weak battery.

If you’ve ever been in warm weather after ordering two-scoops on your ice cream cone, then you can imagine the rest. To my horror, I now had to clean the damn specimen container too! I wouldn’t want the recipient to think I make ugly poos AND I have poor aim. I flashed back all those times I giggled at a “Dirty Sanchez” and here I was all ready to go with no one to give it to. The only thing that could’ve made it possibly more humiliating would’ve been having a random finger in me or if anyone had heard me reciting "Little Jack Horner".

I valiantly re-enacted Shakespeares famous, "out damned spot" monologue while I washed my hands and cleaned everything up. I wiped the beads of sweat from my brow and thought of “Rosie the Riveter” over my accomplishments. While still in the bathroom and feeling very humbled, I filled out the paperwork, boxed everything up and did everything I could to avoid eye contact with the weirdo in the mirror that clearly has one of those fetishes you learn about while searching the internet for the proper etiquette when you only have one cup but two guests.

As I read the print on the label, I noticed that there is a time limit on getting the thing back to Cologard that I had not paid attention to. Just my luck that I’d decide to take care of this when we had a long holiday weekend. My anxiety flares and I’m slightly freaking out that I’ll get a call that my poo was stale, and they need another. Great. This would just confirm that my childhood failures with extruding PlayDoh had followed me into adulthood.

Most of us that send poo to people don’t do it often enough to require pre-printed labels. Speaking for myself, I also don't usually include my return address on it. This makes this whole experience even weirder. Thanks to the pandemic I was at least able to hide my indignities behind a mask. What I could not hide was the fact that I'm running around with an easily identifiable, large white box of my own poo. Really, the only two differences between a half dozen crazy people downtown and myself is that I know my poo isn't as pretty as theirs and I won't still have this box a few weeks from now. Armed with this knowledge I prepared to hand my box over to the friendly girl at UPS while silently hoping she doesn’t mistake it for her DoorDash delivery.

I debated myself over just how pleasant I should be and how much of a smile I should flash. I didn’t want to seem too happy and toss it over and accidentally start a game of hot potato with her. I also didn’t want to appear ashamed because then she might open it up for "re-packaging" or whatever they call it when they think they have a box-o-turd in their possession. I just needed to be assertive and be cool and portray confidence. Easy: Tailor the techniques that worked for me when I was delivering presentations:

pretend to make eye contact by staring at her forehead

imagine her naked

mirror her body language

casually hand her my poo box

After giving it some more thought, I changed plans.

There was an un-staffed drop location a few blocks away. I didn't want to be with this box longer than necessary and I was already feeling like Tom Hanks with Wilson in Castaway. I figured I’d just anonymously stack it with all the other packages, but then my overthinking brain had visions of police evacuating the building and using a robot to blow-up a suspicious package. I realized that even if this did happen, it would still only be my 2nd most embarrassing experience. I then proceeded to walk to the drop-box in the lower floor of the building and casually placed it among a stack of non-descript packages while pondering if any of those other boxes contained as much dignity as mine had. Oh well, the deed was done and I had finally fulfilled my mission. I'm sure someone would have been proud of me but I still refrained from posting about it on Facebook, nonetheless.

While exiting, I walked past the main reception area and I gave an enthusiastic smile to the security guard and tried not to appear suspicious. I was relieved and finally looking forward to some private time during my next session on the throne so I could attempt a reconciliation between the parts of me that I had either molested or sullied. As I pushed myself into the revolving door to exit, I felt like Ted Kaczynski, the notorious Unabomber –just maybe a little less stable and levelheaded.

A couple of weeks goes by and no authorities show up at my home, so I think I’m in the clear. I make it to my doctors appointment and he has my results. I took a deep breath and prepared myself for what may come. He opened his file folder and my anxiety started to rise. I thought, "He better not place a bunch of diagnostic slides of my sample on the wall to review with me." Thankfully, all he had in there were a few documents so I relaxed with the knowledge that my anonymity was intact and there was no potential I'd have to pick the culprit out of a lineup while being interrogated about it. As he shared the results with me my only dismay was accepting that I wouldn't be receiving either a Michelin Star or a Medal for Bravery. But at least I didn’t have cancer.

Ultimately, after everything I put myself through to birth my Baby Ruth, I was just as normal as the majority of others. The only dark cloud over all this was learning that I would have to do this again in 5 years. But hey: If an Olympian can prepare in 4 years, I should be able to do this as well. So with the theme from Rocky playing in the background, I think I’ve got plenty of time to work on impressing the scat fetishists at Cologard. It's going to be the prettiest, shapeliest organic thing to ever fall out of my butt. Now whether a smiling box that wants to eat my poo will make any of this easier, I don’t know but I am positive that it can’t possibly make it any worse.