About a month ago my husband and I found ourselves in a quiet sitting area at The Tummy Temple in Seattle, giggling in nervousness, awaiting a colonic.
Some weeks prior, you see, my husband and I had friends visiting from Portland who were about to embark on a raw food diet for the purposes of cleansing their systems. They explained that the American diet is so disgusting that most adults have about twenty pounds of undigested food in their colons, filling the pockets and lining the sides, preventing nutrients from being absorbed, and festering and pumping toxins into the blood stream. The purpose of the raw food diet, they said, was to "pass the rope" -- that is, dislodge and disgorge the massive snake of undigested, impacted, rubbery waste matter from the colon. They would do this by 1) eating only raw foods; 2) drinking bentonite clay and psyllium husk; 3) undertaking weekly colonics.
My husband and I looked at each other, looked at each other's bloated bellies, and then looked down at our own bloated belies while images of a plaque-y, black, rubberized rope snaking around the toilet bowl flashed into our minds. And thus began our own experimentation with "cleansing."
The Tummy Temple was recommended by a co-worker who had been suffering from a case of constipation so severe that even doctor-prescribed laxatives hadn't worked. If I hadn't been assured by my coworker that it was indeed a legitimate business, the quacky website and converted-apartment appearance would have sent me running.
Whether a colonic is itself a legitimate endeavor is a different story.
I was called in to one of the rooms. The pretty young lady who greeted me told me to get undressed, put on a backless gown, and lie belly-up on the table in the middle of the room with my feet elevated. Next to the table was something that looked like a fish tank with a horizontal glass tube about three inches in diameter running through it. There were a couple of knobs and dials and something that looked like a speedometer. A tall tube to the left looked like a feed chute on a food processor. A couple of articulated hoses emerged from the fish tank.
The young lady explained to me that she would insert a tube into my rectum, as much as thirty inches worth, and that she would pump body-temperature water into my colon. I would take as much water as I could handle, and then the water would come back out naturally, and we would be able to watch the poop and whatever else float by in the horizontal glass tube. We would do this four or five times, she explained with a smile.
Through the thin walls, I could hear my husband talking; by the loudness of his voice, I knew that he was a little bit agitated.
She picked up something that looked like white PVC piping, surprisingly long and thick, with a narrowed end. She smothered it with coconut oil and then told me to turn to my side away from her and breathe naturally. There were two rings of muscle that she would need to penetrate, she said, so I should relax as much as possible.
As I turned away from her and presented her with my naked backside, she said, "Oh, it looks like you have been on vacation."
It took me a moment to realize that she was referring to my white butt and tan lines. Through the wall I heard my husband say, "Whoa, that's pretty fucking big," and I knew that he had just been presented with his own PVC piping.
As gentle as the young lady was, it was still exceedingly uncomfortable; and she seemed to be shoving that thing up my rectum for about ten minutes. Finally she told me to return to lying on my back, and to keep my feet up. She said that she would start filling up the water, and I should let her know when I have had enough.
"How will I know when I have had enough?"
"You'll know." Through the wall, I heard my husband: "Um, I just want you to know that I think I am about to shit the bed," and I knew that he was just a little ahead of me -- and that indeed one knows when one has had enough.
She rubbed a bunch of coconut oil on my belly and massaged in a big circle -- up the right side, across under my ribs to the left, down the left side and across to the right, low across my gut. She started the water; and for the first few seconds, it didn't feel like much. Very quickly, however, it began to feel like a terrible case of diarrhea. My intestines cramped and ached and felt full beyond capacity. I waved my hands desperately at her and she stopped the water.
Together we watched the horizontal tube as it filled with dirty, shitty water, and clumps of poop floated by. She traced her finger along the tube and turned to me. "It looks like you ate a bean burrito yesterday. You should chew more slowly." Indeed, across the fish tank danced some beans and corn, looking essentially the same as they had in my lunch.
We began again, with water filling my insides until I couldn't stand it; and then we emptied the contents. Apparently I wasn't tolerating much water volume, because each time I turned to her and said through clenched teeth "Enough!", she raised her eyebrows and said, "Already?" Several times the water wouldn't empty, and she had to squeeze the tube to force a gas bubble to get out of the way. "Oh, you're so funny with your gas!" she giggled. I just stared at her.
On the third emptying, three little nodes with long tails danced across the tube. I waved my hands in the air in panic. "What was that???"
She turned to me and said calmly, "Looked like parasites."
Towards the end, there wasn't much to see -- just some gobs of mucus. On the fifth and final round, she poured chloroform into the feed chute of the fish tank and explained that the chloroform would help replenish the natural flora in my intestines. She emptied me a final time and removed the PVC tubing, and I sighed in relief. I hustled to the toilet in the corner of the room, expecting to shit brains, because my stomach was still cramped up. But, alas, nothing.
I dressed and waited for my husband to return to the reception area. My stomach looked flat, and my (facial) cheeks were flushed. I felt warm. I felt calm. I felt a general sense of well-being.
Finally my husband appeared in the doorway. He looked awful. He was pale and his eyes were red. He was practically shivering. "I want to go home," my big, manly husband whimpered at me.
We went home and went straight to bed. My husband couldn't get warm, despite multiple layers of clothing. In the middle of the night, my stomach started to complain. Loud, twisting grumbling and cramping woke me up and kept me awake for hours. In the morning we both looked wild in the eyes, pale and drawn, doubled over in pain.
My husband finally had a huge shit, and then composed himself and went to work. I, on the other hand, spent the entire day going from the bed to the bathroom, without relief.
By the next night, I was feeling much better. For several weeks afterwards, both of us had momentous, healthy, loosely-packed poops. Normally we would be happy to recreate whatever caused such joyfully pleasant poops. But not this time. Nothing can convince us to go back for another colonic.