Barium. Spoken, it sounds as if it could be a delicious flavor sensation. Try it and your mouth will throw a party. Come on, everyone's invited! When I was a child I was in a play making reference to a failed ice cream flavor: barium crunch. I thought, how could that possibly fail? It sounds delicious.

I love berries, raspberries, blackberries, marionberries, boysonberries, basically all the berry types made up of juicy balls (ha ha, very funny) of flavorful goodness.

Today I had my first experience with the reality of barium. I was faced with what couldn't have been less than a pint of the chalky, cement-like liquid.

"Make sure you drink it as fast as possible," I was told.

This couldn't be a problem, I generally chug liquids quite well (except for beer) so I got going. I could feel the goop slowly entering my digestive system. The taste may have been "strawberry" or nothing at all. It was awful.

My x-rays went well as far as I could tell. But now the barium has run its course. I have to expell it from my body. It is turning out to be much more difficult than I originally thought it would be. At this rate I'll be constipated for the entire weekend. I need to find a laxative which will no doubt overcompensate and give me diarrhea.

After this, no more doctor visits for a while. I hope.

Gentle Reader, I apologize for the poop talk, but it is all I can think about. To quote Kyle from "South Park," "I'm a fecophiliac on prozac." Except I'm not on prozac.