THAT'S THE LAST SALTY DOG I EVER DRINK

FYI, the following entry is graphic at parts. Read at your own discretion.

I guess I'm going to have to write this entry eventually. So I might as well go ahead and do it.

THURSDAY, 4 PM

I get home with Andrew and begin drinking the gallon o' sludge that promises to make me crap like I've never crapped before.

The first three quarters of the gallon went down smooth.

Came out smooth as well.

It wasn't until the last quarter that I realized ... I obviously hadn't shaken this stuff up enough because there was a tremendous amount of sludge residue at the bottom of the jug.

That last quarter of the sludge was excrutiating.

I've drank a lot of things in my life. But I've never drank anything like this.

The only thing I could possibly compare it to would be extremely salty chihuahua diarrhea.

The instructions say to keep pooping until you're basically pooping clear water. At that point, your colon has been cleansed and you can retire from the salty dog shit water.

By 7:30 p.m., my colon had been cleansed. As I stared into the toilet and saw nothing staring back at me, I knew I had achieved my goal.

And hats off to the Drew Dogg. Susie was gone the entire evening, I was in the bathroom the entire evening and Andrew stayed in the den, watching video after video and eating a dinner of Wheat Thins and Pop Tarts.

Life was good.

I was starving. But life was good.

FRIDAY 4 AM

I'm laying in bed and I am woken up by what sounds like a dog retching on the side of the bed.

I put my dog to sleep 11 months ago. Had the ghost of Maggie come back to ruin my carpet?

No.

Andrew was experiencing his very first bout of vomiting.

I leaped out of bed and grabbed him as he vomited all over his chest and mine.

Susie had gotten home late and crashed in one of the other bedrooms.

"Mama," I said, turning on the light. "Your son is puking all over everything."

As it turned out, the kid had thrown up all over his bed and it had dried into a thick crust. It was dried on his shirt. Apparently, he had been throwing up for a few hours. It looked as if he had taken on Linda Blair as a roommate.

We got him changed and had to switch into "What the hell are we gonna do?" mode.

The original plan was to take Andrew to daycare, we go to the hospital, I get my colonscopy, she brings me home to let me sleep the rest of the day and goes to pick up Andrew at 5.

Now, with Andrew erupting like a miniature human volcano, the plans had to be changed.

Get Susie's Mom to come watch him while we go to the hospital? Nope. Grandma's in Texas.

Take Andrew to the hospital and have him sit for several hours while sick as a dog? Nope.

Cancel the appointment and reschedule it so I'd have to go on yet another liquid diet and drink yet another gallon of salty dog poo? Hell no.

I'm sent to the 24 hour pharmacy at 4:30 a.m. to buy some Pedialyte for the kid.

I come home with my solution for the problem.

"Let's go ahead and take him to daycare," I explain carefully. "And tell them that he's acting 'weird' and if there's any problems to call us."

Andrew cast his vote on this with some projectile vomit while moaning the words "Daddy, help!"

That idea was shot down.

FRIDAY 9 AM

Long story short, I had to drive myself to the hospital while Susie stayed home with Andrew.

SOMEBODY would come and pick me up when my colonscopy was through. Can't tell you who. Just "somebody". Could be my wife. Could be a neighbor. Could be an in-law. Could be our former daycare lady or someone from our old church. We had calls out to EVERYONE we could think of.

I get to the hospital and am carted off to my little room. I watch the "Today" show for an hour in a thin gown exposing my macho hunk 'o manhood to the nurse there.

The nurse tried to hook me up with an IV but couldn't get the needle through the skin.

"You've got some thick skin," she said.

"I know," I said. "It comes from dealing with a bunch of fucking assholes on the internet."

(Not you, of course. Just a bunch of fucking assholes that don't deserve a link to let you know who I'm talking about. But they know who they are.)

I lay there for an hour and watch TV. Then they wheel me into the surgery room.

I'm told to lie on my side in a fetal position. They pull my gown up to expose my ass.

Everyone introduces themselves and I finally just said "I doubt seriously I'll remember any of your names in a few minutes, so we can stop with the introductions."

Then ... I'm not sure how it happened ... but I passed out.

I woke up at one point and looked at the monitor hanging on the wall. It looked like some kind of bizarre Fantastic Voyage. Journey To The Center Of My Bowels.

I wasn't that impressed with the show, so I went back to sleep.

I woke up 25 minutes after I first went in the room. When I woke up, I was in a different room and I'll be damned if the wallpaper wasn't moving.

I laid there on my side and watched the wallpaper circling around the room and thought "How the hell do they do that? That is the coolest thing in the world!"

Finally, the wallpaper quit rotating and stopped.

I rolled over and watched some TV.

The doctor came in and said (drum roll please) ...

.

.

.

.

..

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

"I couldn't find anything wrong."

No polyps. No cancer. No hemmerhoids.

Nothing.

It was good news to hear, but I couldn't help but be a bit pissed that I had to starve myself for two days to hear it.

My brother-in-law came to pick me up and take me home. I was alert the entire time. Came home, ate an entire frozen pizza and laid down for a nap.

Rested an hour.

Got up and told Susie to go get Andrew's prescription. While I was in the hospital, she had taken Andrew to the doctor. He has a "Retro Virus". Basically, he's got a 102 degree fever and wasn't holding anything in his tummy.

The recommended prescription? Suppositories.

So Susie went to get the suppositories.

She had grabbed her wallet and not her purse.

She got about 4-5 miles when her front tire blew out.

In the middle of nowhere.

With no cell phone since it was still in her purse.

She got out of the van and started hiking the three miles to the nearest sign of civilization.

An older couple drove past her and stopped.

She used their cell phone to call me to come get her.

A) I can't drive for 24 hours after my surgery.

B) My car is still at the hospital. Her brother brought me home from the hospital in his vehicle.

So why the hell is she calling me??

She hung up and called her brother and begged him to come change the tire on the van.

He said he would.

She thanked the older couple and they took off.

A few minutes later, a phone company guy drove by.

He was in a hurry to get back to the office to clock out and start his weekend, but he stopped to change my wife's flat for her.

Proving there's some damned good Samaritans out there still.

Granted, he tore the running board off the van to fix the flat. But that can be soldered back on. I guess.

She finally came home three hours after she had left to go get the suppositories.

Andrew got his very first suppository last night.

God bless the little guy. He was so weak he barely acknowledged it. There was a whimper and his eyes shot open wide and that was it.

So it was a bad day all around.

To put it in perspective ... I got a camera and light shoved up my ass for about 15 minutes.

And I had the best day out of the three of us.