Colonoscopies, and other epic game show ideas

Alex, I would like to buy a bowel"

Me and two of my old work buds from a job twenty years ago got re-connected by social media recently.  We sent messages of good will to each other, with the promise of a future lunch together to get caught up.  I will refer to them anonymously as “Dave” and “Charles”, but will not reveal their true identities since my Character Defamation Legal Fund is still tapped out from the last time I failed to use fake names.  We agreed on a day, time and place for lunch.  I was looking forward to it and blocked out time for a long leisurely meal.  I thought about what exaggerations I could tell to enhance my career accomplishments, or what excuses I could conjure up for the lack there of.

A couple of days before our lunch, I got a text from the one I will call “Charles”,  who said “Dave’s” colonoscopy procedure got changed to the day we were to have lunch.  We’d have to re-schedule.  Well, not one to follow polite decorum, I wrote back and said we could re-schedule, or better yet, we bring sack lunches to the event and watch.  That did not get the expected enthusiastic response from either fellow, so we re-scheduled.

But it did get me to thinking.  I know you, the reader, believe that it could be a dangerous thing, but sometimes I do think.  I was thinking there should be a way for friends and family to participle in an event like a colonoscopy, and perhaps treat it like a game show.  They have TV monitors in the operating room so that the physician can see what is in there when he is snaking the camera up his patient’s bowels, so why not televise it for the attendees?  One idea I had was to turn it into a drinking game. 

In my mind, I am thinking that there would be an announcer for this drinking game and he would speak in a hushed voice, like he was broadcasting a golf tournament.  He’d give us the play by play, like:  “Now the probe is past the first hole, ready to make the turn ….  There is a hazard on the right to be avoided……”  Every time the Dr. finds a benign polyp, the announcer would inform the viewing audience.  We would cheer, and take a gulp of beer. If the polyp looked more than benign, we would, in sympathy to the patient, chug the entire adult beverage.  It would be a fun event for everyone.  Well, maybe not for the patient.  But he is on anesthesia, and that is a whole other type of fun.

I have allowed the concept of this drinking game to fester in my imagination.  I took the liberty of contacted Dr. Phil, of TV fame, and pitched the idea. He said he’d lend his name to the show. He was sure we could get it on the Oprah Network, since it is starved for programing.  For the right amount of cash, he’d endorse it.  My skeptical friends, who do not share my enthusiasm for this endeavor, said Dr. Phil could not endorse a medical procedure based game because he was not a real Doctor.  “Not real?” I gasped.  “How do you know that”?  “Because he does not have a last name.  No one could get a diploma that said only:  “Dr. Phil, …. Dr. of something”.   Good point.  I may have to find another quack.

A drinking game may be fine for buddies, stay at home moms, or those who should be incarcerated, but there is real money in producing game shows for television.  And it apparently is dirt cheap to do so.  If I could just hack into the television feed of a dozen or so Colonoscopies, I could make a fortune selling this game show using the videos.  One game concept that I thought of could be named:   “He Said, She Said, while under sedation!”    Here is the basic premise for this game:  The patient does not know what he or she may have said to the attending physicians or nurses when coming out from anesthesia.  This game is to see how much money can be coerced from the patient in order for the spouse NOT to hear what was said. 

The game would have the attending nurses standing behind individual podiums on one side of the stage.  Facing them is the spouse of the patient, who is wearing sound proof ear muffs.  The patient is next to the spouse, facing the nurses.  The game show host would be an ebullient smart ass, whose job it is to make the patient look pathetic.  The goal of the game is to goad the patient into spending hush money to keep his groggy post procedure comments from being revealed to the spouse. 

I think the banter would go something like this:  Game show host:  “Tell us, nurses, while “Dave” was under sedation did he say to one of you, that are half his age, I might add,  A. “I think I love you, Dolores”.  B.” My mother was a saint” or C. “I love cats”.   The camera would zoom in on the panel of nurses.  The patient, “Dave”, would have the goal of offering hush money so that the attending nurses would not reveal any incriminating comments to his wife.   “Dave” would bid $100, $200, $300 and so on until one of the nurses would finally cave, hit the buzzer, and agree to take the money in exchange for eliminating the answer the patient did not want revealed to his spouse.   This would be GREAT TV.

The excitement of how much the patient would pay to avoid any incriminating statement would be stoked by pausing for advertisements from divorce lawyers, Lie detector services, and one room apartment complexes.  Who could resist NOT staying tuned in to this scintillating television?  Jerry Springer will be taking notes.

But, as you can imagine, without the real Dr. Phil, or an actual doctor’s endorsement, this new kind of programming will have to wait until networks are further enlightened.  It may be a while before a game like this comes to broadcast TV.  I can only hope that “Dave” has a few more colonoscopies in his future so we can at least play the drinking game at his expense.  It would give new meaning to the term “bottoms up.”