I had to eat a pink cup full of barium for an MRI once. (I think it's a metal? Plastic acid? Mixed with whipped fat?) They color it and flavor it and fluff it with plastic grease, but there's no disguising the fact it isn't food. Or tasty. Or even edible.
You take a scoop, and try to get it to the back of your throat, to swallow it with minimum tongue handling? Because it feels like soft ABS plastic? But it doesn't move, because it's too thick. So you have to moosh it down with your tongue, into a flat strip, like lizard bacon, and then try to pass it down there in one long piece. Like a molten surfboard. It doesn't dissolve with saliva. Not even close. It just flattens out. It won't stick to your tongue, like say tupperware; but it won't dissolve, either. It just changes shape.
God ~ don't chew it.
Oooh, you don't want to do that again; try to handle another scoop ~ and you're one spoon into the cup, with nine or so to go. You'd throw it up, but it's not going anywhere. Unless you put both hands around your throat and squeeze hard. It's sealing your esophagus shut, like expanding insulating foam.
Twenty-seven more strwaberry inches to go.
Guy comes in and checks on ya. "Hi! Eat up!"
"Yo mama. This shit is terrible."
"It's just like a shake."
"And you're Ronald McDonald."
They start you out eating the stuff about forty-five minutes before they need you, because they know it will take you that long, and that they'll have to bring in the Doctor and a magician and the Fire Department guys with special tools. They put you in a little holding room, where there's no place to hide anything, without standing on your chair and popping up an acoustic tile in the ceiling.
It's the specially designed Pink ("Strawberry!")Barium Shake Room.
It tastes like squishy nylon, coated with Pam. Like one of those buoy floats they put on pool lane dividers. Only soft, and stretchy.
The Doctor comes in. "You 'bout got it?"
"This shit is terrible."
"I know. You should try to get kids to eat it."
Hmmm. Yah. I guess so. Empathy, now, for the oncologist, gets me through another bite. He starts humming. Patting his knee tops.
"Can I go out in the hall?"
He looks suspicious. "Yaaaaaah." He thinks I'm going to put it somewhere. But if he thinks I can get something down, a something that's acting claustrophobic, while I'm claustrophobic.....he's really mistaken.
I still remember sitting at the courtyard window. In my little "gown." In a soft, puffy, pastel chair. That looked familiar. Fortunately, they had sunshine and some early Spring rhodies blooming, and within another half hour or so, I had it down to one and a half scoops. Gonna do two scoops out of that? Noo. Gonna do a giant one? Noo. Hhugggh. Shivers.
Dr takes a look in the cup, thinks about it ever so carefully, and says, okay I think that'll do it.
Boy, the MRI tube looked downright safe and friendly after that.
By the way, I don't think you'll get any dies or markers like that, so don't worry.
I remember they had to cut the tops of my feet open, too. For dyes. But that was bad, so I won't tell you about it.
They usually have candy or suckers to give out, and I always take one. Or two.
Just try and stop me, man. |
