After about an hour of scrolling on my phone, the nurse came back and told me that they were going to take me into the theatre where they’d perform my rectal endoscopy. 

So I hopped into my hospital bed, tucked myself in and a couple of orderlies came to wheel me in my bed up to where the procedure would take place. 

This was a really weird feeling. Immediately it felt way more dramatic than it needed to be, like okay I saw some blood in my poop, great. Why do I need to be wheeled around like I’m being rushed into surgery after a gunshot wound? I had to lie on my back completely flat. 

And I remember just looking up at the ceiling, trying to not make eye contact with anyone that I rolled past. It was also a very drafty experience. I was naked on a bed in a hospital gown, I felt so exposed, so vulnerable to attack. 

And people were just walking past me, just regular old people, who probably thought I was like dying or something. For some reason, I had this real urge to try and make it seem like everything was okay. 

So I was chatting to the orderly who was rolling me around and trying to show him I was fine and this was all a little unnecessary. Like I could’ve walked. 

The weirdest part was when I went into the elevator. Dunno if you’ve ever been lying down in an elevator but it’s a really weird experience, I imagine it’s what it feels like when your soul leaves your body. That lifting feeling is a weird experience. 

When I got to the theatre, there was another bottle waiting for me. But by this stage, I was an absolute pro and I was very excited to see if I could do it again. 

After another successful butt bottle, it was time for me to enter the space where my space would be entered. There was a nurse and Dr Raj in the theatre and they rolled me in right next to a computer screen. 

Something I forgot to mention was that Dr Raj had asked me how I wanted to do the procedure. 

I had two options, the first one was to be completely knocked unconscious while it happened. People who didn’t really want to be awake for the procedure elected this option, most people did but the only downside was that I wasn’t able to drive for 24 hours which meant I had to take another day off work. 

The second option was for me to be awake for the whole procedure. I asked whether it would hurt, and he said that he’d be gentle. I thought he winked after he said that but it could have just been a twitch. 

I didn’t want to take more time off from my new job so I elected to be awake for the entire procedure. And here’s what happened. 

Once I got into the theatre they rolled me onto my side, and I had a direct view of this TV screen. Dr Raj lifted up the back of my hospital gown and started lubing up this extremely long camera. It kind of looked like a really long version of those lighters that are silver and can be bent in different directions. 

He made some really awkward small talk, telling me about how long he’d worked with my Dad. Which I thought was weird given he was about to be the first man that’s ever been inside me. 

Things kicked up a level when he turned the camera on and the TV screen in front of me started displaying the picture from around the room. Immediately, I realised what the TV screen was for, it was going to show both me, Dr Raj and the nurse exactly what was going on inside of me. 

Dr Raj asked if I was ready. At the time I was a virgin, so I’d never done anything like this before. I gave him a sheepish nod and I felt this cool metal rod enter my butt. I tried to keep my cool but it was such a weird sensation, weirder still on the screen in front of me I could see exactly where that camera was pointed. 

At first I could see my big brown ass, then it went all dark, Dr Raj flicked the light on the end of the camera and instantly everything was pink. It reminded me of that episode of when Ms Frizz takes the whole Magic School Bus into the body of one of the other teachers. But this was much less fun. 

Like someone trying to rescue a small child from a well, Dr Raj kept feeding this camera deeper and deeper into my intestines. It was weird, I felt the tube make its way through my stomach. As he went he was checking for signs of cancer or any irregularities. 

After about 15 minutes of looking around my intestines, everything looked pretty normal. He asked a few more questions, mainly about diet and things. I told him that I ate pretty well, my girlfriend was a chef so it was easy to eat pretty good food. 

For whatever reason I mentioned that she had been trying to work on a new beetroot salad recipe for a restaurant that she was working at and Dr Raj stopped inserting the metal rod in my ass. 

Dr Raj: Beetroot did you say?

Rowan: Yeah I’ve been eating a tonne of it since she’s been working on the recipe. 

Dr Raj looked at the nurse, and looked a little disappointed. 

Dr Raj: Beetroot is known to make your poop a little red. Did you know that?

Rowan: What?...No. 

Dr Raj sighed and started pulling this metal rod out of my butthole. 

Dr Raj: Rowan, try to not eat your girlfriends beetroot salad recipes for the next few weeks and let me know if you notice any changes. 

The next week I didn’t eat a single piece of beetroot and I didn’t have a single instance of “blood” in my poop. Immediately I felt like such an idiot. I had just been violated by a very accomplished gastroenterologist all because I’d eaten too much beetroot. 

I’d been beet-rooted. 

There are a lot of pro’s and con’s to having a family that work in the medical space. There are also a lot of pro’s and con’s to dating a chef.