Instead of coming to the first day of school like every other high-school student, I unfortunately was spending my day at Children’s Hospital for a colonoscopy. The procedure was simple; the doctors said they would just insert a camera into my body to look at my intestines. Luckily, I wouldn’t have to feel a thing.

As I waited in the hospital room, I reminisced about my experience the night before after having drunk almost a half a gallon of Gatorade mixed with laxatives. I spent the majority of my night in the bathroom––over three hours to be exact––and now I was surrounded by minor skateboarding accident victims and young anguished mothers holding their newborns.

To pass the time, I asked myself two questions: ‘To what extent would I be personally violated in so many ways?’ and ‘Why should a teenager ever have to get a colonoscopy?’

As I sat in the waiting room with my mom, a strange women dressed in scrubs came up to us carrying a red box. When she sat down, she began to talk about what was going to happen once I went into the room. She pulled out all types of needles, tubes, and lube––yes, lubricant––and proceeded to tell me they would all be used on me. There is honestly nothing worse than being told that you will be poked and probed with needles and tubes for two solid hours.

Fortunately, my anxiety subsided with the nurse’s administration of the anesthesia that began my uncontrollable laugh attack. Even if I hadn’t been put to sleep, I would have passed out from either total angst or an injection of some other depressant chemicals to calm my spastic and irrational nerves.

After what seemed like a few seconds, I was back in the room where the traumatic, childhood-ruining experience began. The first thing I wondered was, “When will I get this colonoscopy over with?” The nurses found it humorous; I, still dazed by degradation and drugs, didn’t catch on.

I woke up laying on my side. There was nothing worse than imaging how I got there until I realized that, around the age of fifty, I’d inevitably have to experience the same distress and violation again.