We have a wonderful system in my Canadian province of Ontario for checking people for colon cancer. Every couple of years, a kit is sent out to people over a certain age asking for a sample of the solid material we all produce in our bathrooms every day and this sample is tested.
But as great as the system is, each time a new kit is mailed out, the instructions inside seem to get ever simpler. If I remember correctly years ago, the literature and diagrams sent out to us all used the word “feces” to put a specific name on the material they wanted to test. However, that word might have caused some confusion among some members of the populace because eventually, “feces” was dropped in exchange for the more popular “stool”. Everyone knows what a “stool sample” is, don’t we?
Well, maybe not everyone. I am going to go ahead and guess that a big meeting was held among the ones in charge at Cancer Care Ontario to try to figure out a way to get a better response from the millions of people who were receiving these important kits. And finally, a step that the committee had been avoiding for years seemed to be the only logical one to take.
And so, this year’s set of instruction just goes for it. The material being sought is none other than “poop”, plain and simple. With any luck, there will not be a lot of people who don’t understand what that is. It is possible that another word that starts with the letter “s” was considered, and maybe some day it will come to that, but for now, “poop” will have to do. It is used three times in the instructions which also mention the word “pee” but we won’t go down that road.
Now, just in case there are some people who don’t know that much about pooping, though they’ve lived on this planet for 50 years or more, a handy diagram is included in the instructions.I studied the illustration for quite a while before getting down to business.
The whole operation, while simple on the surface, left me, nevertheless, quite exhausted. You might even say I was pooped, but you already knew that, didn’t you?
Today I got my results in the mail with the news that I am good to go.
Good to go?
What?
Not again.
©2019 Jim Hagarty
