A friend of mine went for a biopsy last week. I guess it's an indication of age when words like biopsy can be bandied about between you and your peers.

While we were talking, he described in great detail the procedure and the consequences of it. I was thinking how the most humiliating thing you endure as a young man is being checked for a hernia. As you get older, you don't bat an eye when your doctor begins to shove tubes into parts of your body you'd never imagined having anything shoved into.

I had a colonscopy a few years back and the only thing I could equate it with was I thought it must be what an alien abduction feels like to the abductee. You're in a dark room, there's this strange hissing sound and you have the discomfort of something being wiggled around inside of you. There really is no describing feeling something inside your abdomen like that. And, my doctor was nice! I can't imagine what it must be like for someone whose doctor is a jerk! The doctor and his assistant (his wife) urged me to watch along with them on the monitor as they wormed the fiber optic cable inside of me. Man, I just wanted to close my eyes and get the whole thing over with (a la alien abduction).

So, my friend (who shall remain nameless) wound up having this biopsy of his prostate. The doctor of course went though all the things that might happen after the procedure (which all doctors do but then, what's the alternative not to get the damn test done and wind up with something far worse than what they describe?). And my friend managed to experience all of them, including not being able to urinate, urinating blood (which freaks us guys out ladies, let me tell you) and finally he wound up in the emergency room getting a bag attached to him to aid in the discharge of fluid. Considering what women go through with childbirth and everything else, I'm probably sounding like a big wuss (and so's my friend) but, when he was telling me the story boy, did I feel sorry for him.

Hearing stuff like that puts my problems into perspective, I hate having to deal with that kind of stuff but as we get older all of us do.