The first of such tests is the sigmoidoscopy. In this highly sophisticated medical procedure, your doctor shoves a plastic hose up your rectum, equipped with a television camera and something like a set of pincers, and proceeds to collect samples off your colonic walls.

Though I've known many people to turn 50, I've never heard them talk of this procedure or the dark recesses where it could lead. So in the interest of public service, I've decided to break the silence.

The morning of the procedure, I prepared myself according to the doctors orders: self-administering a double enema. Then, bearing gifts of flowers and chocolates for the good doctor, I put myself in his hands. The hose went up my bottom, I sang a few Barry Manilow tunes and I was soon on my way back home.

When the results of my sigmoidoscopy came back, my physician told me that I had a big decision to make. "We found two polyps growing in your colon and we biopsied them," he said. "One of them was a pre-malignant polyp which sounds bad, but is quite normal in men of your age. The decision you have to make is whether or not you want to investigate the rest of the colon to see what kind of shape it's in."

Evidently, the sigmoidoscopy only examines the first third of the colon. To look at the rest one must undergo a procedure called the colonoscopy.

It really didn't seem like a difficult decision to make. The idea of a longer garden hose with a bigger camera and sharper pincers didn't sound like any reason to go out and buy a new tuxedo.

But I was overruled. My older brother, who is a doctor, told me: "Hey, it's good preventive medicine. Find out what's going on." My own personal physician didn't hesitate either. "Oh, absolutely," he said, like it was a foregone conclusion that I would jump at the chance to have my bowels unearthed on prime-time hospital television.

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