I am an enormous fan of getting older.Because lets face it, the alternative is so very, very quiet and still.
However there are some 'fringe benefits' that come with aging that at times we could all do without.
For example, medical check-ups that require more than a light shone in your ears and a look at your tongue.
I'm talking about those little one day procedures that involve tubing and wiring and a far-too- young-looking nurse who hands you small containers with screw caps and asks you to fill them with various fluids.
THIS I did not sign on for.
As a woman I am more than familiar with the term " Just try to relax".
And a straw pole taken over the years has revealed the unkind truth that no doctor on the planet- and I mean nowhere- has mastered the art of the dignified pap-smear.
By choice, I try to attend female physicians for this annual delight, however in my experience not even the best trained, most compassionate health care worker has ever come up with a fun loving and enthralling way of sticking an ice-cold speculum inside your girlie bits and scratching off the inner layer of a cervix with a paddle pop stick.
Only nerve endings inside the first inch my arse.
And before anyone starts jumping up and down and telling me that things have improved, and that there are alternatives to cold steal on soft tissue, let me just point out that no matter what instrumentation is being used, the truth is that if men had to have this done every year, they would have invented a way to do it while you were at the pub or eating a pizza in front of the telly.
No woman- no woman- looks at her calender and says " Oh Great, I get to have my snatch examined for cancer today !!!"
No female asks for this for Christmas.
Thankfully, most women now under the age of 16 will never have to face this disquieting event.
Due to the marvels of medical science, a vaccine has been invented and handed out to the majority of teenage women in the western and wealthy world.
I have no words to speak when I think of my sisters in poorer places. Here is where my heart breaks.
But back to my rant.
As well as THAT procedure, which is not age related, and the occasional peeing into a cup ( 'Honeymooners disease you say Dr Dipshit? Yes, that's hilarious, yes, I get the reference, yes, it is just as funny hear it a second time"), I have been lucky enough to get away with the average amount of pokes and prods as time has gone by.
I did once have the indignity of having the words 'HIV NEGATIVE' written in BOLD RED TEXTA across my file by my Muslim obstetrician in Malaysia, in spite of the fact that this was my third child, and I had slept with the same man since I was 17.
I remember the nurse took 10 minutes to read those 2 words, and then walked around the office with my file under her arm, and the affirmation of my lack of 'uncleanliness and disease' facing the outside.
Perhaps she thought she was doing me a favour.
After all, you can't tell with these so called' liberated white women'.
But I'll get over the implication. Eventually.
So thus far, thus good- as they say- but recently a very dear friend of mine, whom I shall not name as I would very much like her to remain a friend of mine, fell into the catchment area of requiring more than a once over by a GP.
She was told it was time for a colonoscopy. A check up only.Just to sure.
See, now this is where I start getting 'thing'.
Because there are certain bits of my body - namely my anus-I like to treat as mine, and mine alone.
I am not a baby, I know the saying ' If you don't eat, you don't shit, and if you don't shit you die'- but when it comes to sharing my shit, the dying option looks like a genuine alternative.
I have many friends - gay,straight,bi,the big fella who lives near the beach- who assure me that the anus is a hole much maligned by the media and the popular press. They say, I should embrace the dark passage and be at one with my effluent.
Honestly? I am not.
I try, but it makes me giggle, and then I get all 'thing', and there the conversation ends. And words that are otherwise innocuous seem rude and funny. Like 'ends'.
I am giggling even now.
And I know it's embarrassment, and that I should get over it, and I know that it's probably Freudian and related to my childhood, but God forbid, when the day comes that MY trusted medical practitioner says "Wendy, It's time we checked out your rectum" guaranteed I'll be up out of that chair and out the door faster than Tiger Woods can fill a hole.
So what's a girl to do?
My friend handled it with the energy and decorum she is noted for.
"TODAY I AM GOING IN FOR MY COLONOSCOPY" she proudly typed " and in other news....blah blah blah etc". And that is cool. Way cool.
Because the fear of something gives it more magic and power than it deserves, and by naming it and normalizing it, she took away the mystique and shadow that surrounded it, at least for me. And for that, my dear one, I applaud you.
I shall face this aging prospect with the same vigor I always have, but now I shall also be armed with the weapon of adopted courage in the face of collecting bodily fluids in a jar.
"Ha ha!!" I shall laugh when they hand me a paper bag with the words 'stool sample' on the front "I WAS thinking of a bowl of Carbanara and a salad for dinner tonight, but seeings as I'm now eating for two....how about a Curry and a plate of fresh figs?".
( love you J.)
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