When it comes to putting off essential tasks, I’m not exactly world class, but slack I can.

I have no recent knowledge of the air pressure in my tires or the oil level in my engine. My furnace has not been tuned up for winter nor has firewood been harvested.

There is a tiny pink dot on my right arm that looks suspicious and seems to be growing infinitesimally larger every time I look at it, yet to date I have done nothing about it. I’m waiting to see if it will heal itself.

As shameful as these procrastinations are, they pale in significance to the one that gnaws at me in the sleepless hours before dawn.

I speak of colon cancer.

Colons are an organ most of us would rather never think about. If asked, I will deny having one. I know not the body part of which you speak, sir.

When cancer is paired with colon, the toxicity of the term increases exponentially. The mind just doesn’t want to go there.

And yet mine does.

Four years ago this autumn my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. She was dead three months later. Less than two years ago, my father-in-law was similarly diagnosed. He did not last a year.

My mother was in her early 80s, Stan in his mid-70s. Neither had ever had a comprehensive screening for colon cancer. If they had submitted to periodic colonoscopies or sigmoidoscopies, they would most likely be alive today.

And why did they not?

It wasn’t out of ignorance. Rather, they could not bring themselves to submit to an exploration of such an intimate body part.

My mother was an extremely modest woman. It would have been too great an insult to have a camera investigate her large intestines.

Stan lived life on his terms. He didn’t eat vegetables. He insisted on his daily donut. Submit to a colonoscopy? Not in your life.

Because my mother’s sense of decorum and Stan’s stubbornness had fatal consequences, I decided this summer that I had better get off my duff and take a different path.

When I brought up the subject with my family doctor, she said a colonoscopy was overdue. It was good that I’d had a lesser procedure, a flexible sigmoidoscopy, seven years ago. But as a man over 50, I needed a fuller exploration of my bowels, she said.

Why had I waited until now? Because Mom and Stan had a point. A colonoscopy is both intimidating and embarrassing. There is no dignity to it. And who wants to fast for 24 hours and purge his system?

It’s Wednesday morning. My fasting has begun. I will miss lunch and dinner and breakfast tomorrow. Soon I will have to glug an awful potion that will scour my insides.

I feel anticipatory hunger and squeamishness. I wish I could be knocked unconscious until this is all over.

Thankfully, I will be unconscious during the procedure. I will float in dreamland during the whole wretched thing.

President Bush endured a colonoscopy this summer. They found benign polyps. They were nipped before they could become cancerous. The colonoscopy may have saved our president’s life.

Colorectal cancer is the third most common cause of cancer death in men. It is the third most common type of cancer in men and women. At a small price to one’s dignity, it can be avoided.

It’s now Friday morning. I am euphoric. I survived my colonoscopy.

The procedure was practically a non-event. Blessedly, I slept through everything. I woke up happy to be alive and ravenous for lunch. My tubing is in fine shape.

On the ride home from Queen of the Valley, I chatted like a magpie. I told Cheryl she needed to get a colonoscopy. I extolled the care I had received. I couldn’t say enough about the charming accent of the staff member with the English accent from Newcastle.

Or so Cheryl tells me. I can’t remember any of this. The anesthetic was still messing with my mind.

Hours later, I again brought up the staff member with the wonderful Newcastle accent. You’d have thought she was from Scotland, I said.

I know, Cheryl said. You already told me.