DRE: Destination Black Hole

All simple beginnings start with a small step. When I was three, being able to tell my mom I needed to go use the potty versus crapping my pants was that kind of a step. Then at sixteen, or eighteen, or whatever the legal age is, being able to go to second base without having an orgasm is also a small step. At 25, small steps, for me at least, meant being able to pay the rent and the electricity bill and still have enough left over to eat.

Today, as I enter Turd year of med school, I have entered yet another phase of small steps, which I am hoping will eventually pile up to a gimongo step, in a series of precariously placed small step events.

So, a bunch of us MS III's got together to celebrate something or other like finishing a rotation or the first time getting your ass chewed in front of people by your attending. It's a nice, unclassifiable place which serve Cuban delicacies, has a Flemingo (or was it Flemenco? Whatever it is, she looked like a bird) dancer and decorated with sea shells and chinese paper lanterns. It's like a schizo who forgot his meds and has a personality disorder. Anyway, as we are munching away on Cuban delicacies and sipping sangria, chit chatting about the week's past events that may or may not have embarrassed us, I excitedly announce that I performed my first DRE (Digital Rectal Exam), except when I said it, there was a slight pause in the night's musical entertainment and I said the word "rectal" with decibel or two louder than normal speech, whereby several heads turned our way, fork stilled in mid air and food falling off and hitting the fine china with a loud "plunk".

I am sure there are many causes for excitement; a new promotion, scoring one with a hot chick or a stud dude, a delectable meal with great wine, your first born child, the death of your mother-in-law (generic MILs, mine being the grand exception)and now, rectal exams. It was my first on a real life person versus a dummy lower torso I affectionately call "P. Elvis", with his legs ripped off and his ass hole the size of a ping pong ball due to many years of abuse by many, many index fingers, which makes me think of how sick a person must be to offer his asshole for teaching purposes, especially in the light of some monetary reward. So, understandably, this was quite a small step for me.

It is always awkward to ask someone if you can stick any type of an appendage into holes in their bodies that we ourselves would protect like it was Fort Knox under normal circumstances. However, since rectal bleeding constitutes some type of an immediate thing and that not doing a rectal exam might mean problems for your asshole in the future as it is torn a second cousin by wolverine-like lawyers who revel in human suffering and the celebration of new assholes, it was indeed pertinent to perform one, for which I half volunteered (I know, sick) and was half appointed by my attending.

So I approach this little old lady and nice enough, she obliged to let my finger in. At this point, I am thinking of my fellow colleague who is a 6-foot, 245-pound hunk of a Georgian who is built like a brick wall. In fact, I ran into him one time and fell over. I have seen his fingers and it scares me to think of it in a hole with a definite circumference.

I tell the lady that she has to make pretend like she is going to poop as I slip my finger into her anus. I go in and I feel, except I have no frigging clue what I am supposed to be feeling for. Rectal hemorrhoids? Polyps? Fistulas? Old people are supposed to have a rectal shelf. I've always wondered why they call it a shelf. It makes me think of food when I am sure it is sick to think of food in that context. What? A shelf....does it hold peanut butter or mayonnaise or a can of relish?

And then the little old lady farts on my finger, which I am sure embarrassed her more than it did my finger. Finally, the ordeal is over. I ask the little old lady how I did and she smiled and said it went OK. The greatest comment she gave me was that I was very gentle. It was great, since I did not know what the hell I was doing. It was great also since I can put that under my belt and check off the list of things to do. Small steps, you know. Start from the very bottom and work up. Very soon, before you know it, I would be performing brain surgery.