The Alien Invasion

I was more scared of the cannula than the camera. Screw a piece of plastic into my hand and pump me full of chemicals? No way! I felt panicky, physically sick. I’d rather be undiagnosed and ill for the rest of my life than let them do that. I asked whether there was an alternative. “Well, yes… but it won’t be pleasant.” Fine. I’ll take unpleasant over nightmare any day.
They numbed my throat with a spray. I wanted to walk into the theatre, but they insisted on wheeling me in on a trolley. It was made very clear that I needed to be patient, play my role. Relax, they said, it’s going to be uncomfortable. Don’t fight it. We can still drug you, if you’d prefer, but to be honest you’ll recover more quickly if we don’t. Quick sounded good.
I had imagined the camera as a slim fibre-optic device, a thin stalk, maybe almost as wide as a straw. Ha ha. How naive. It was black, phallic, more akin to a bike pump or a truncheon. There was no going back. They pushed it into my mouth and towards the rear of my throat. I gagged. Try to relax. More gagging. A lifetime’s gagging. We’re going in, he said.
It wasn’t pain, exactly. More of a slow, agonising invasion. An intimacy almost beyond endurance. I drooled and retched, laughing inwardly at the surrender of my dignity while staring at the consultant in horrified fascination. He was watching my guts on the screen in front of him, piloting the camera with what looked to me, brain on fire, like a set of handlebars.
As he turned my insides out, I wondered how he was interpreting this visceral tableau of pink, red and purple. I’m going to inflate your stomach, he said, this might feel strange. How would I tell, I wondered. Then I looked down and saw my midriff swelling like a football. Retch, retch, retch. I felt faint. He steered left and right and I remembered that I’d never seen Alien.
Apparently satisfied, he started to retract the invader. The withdrawal was worse, an unbirth of searing intensity. Someone held my head still. The room was turning white, but I managed to grasp the idea that fainting would be a very, very bad thing indeed. Then it was out and I gasped and twitched like a fish out of water, working out how to breathe properly.
I was formally diagnosed: a hiatus hernia, a pause in my digestive abilities. Not bad enough to operate, not good enough to be of no concern. The next step was to be a lengthier process: a tube down my nose into my stomach, attached to a monitor clipped to my belt. FOR A MONTH. I booked the appointment, but when the time came I cancelled it the day beforehand.
That was five or six years ago. I put up with the heartburn and the frequent, undignified inability to swallow, accepting it as my lot. When I left full-time work, I started to lose the stress-induced weight that I’d put on over the years and things seemed to improve. By the start of this year, fifteen kilos lighter, the symptoms had faded away. I’m “cured”, for now.