MY DARLING, MY COLONOSCOPY

I have always said that I feel lucky with every birthday I get. With number 50 my luck was enhanced by an extra gift: a colonoscopy. It took me seven months to get around to scheduling my suggested screening so by the time I had booked it and filled out the forms, it was winter. I read and re-read all the information about what you’re supposed to do and not do the few days leading up to the procedure and had picked up my prescription for the foul-tasting colon cleanser stuff that you have to drink the night before. But before embarking on my prep, I was worried about a storm prediction that was supposed to leave us with a foot of snow. Should I cancel? I didn’t want to do that because I was psyched to get it over with, but I imagined the horror of drinking the river of disgusting liquid goo all night and then not actually being able to get to the Medical Center.

In an effort to figure out my best move, I dialed up the very new and glitzy Colonoscopy’s R Us place and explained my worry. “We have never had a day where the docs couldn’t get here and we feel that if the docs can get here then you should be able to get here, too,” the woman at the desk told me, completely unsympathetic to my dilemma. “Well,” I said, “Maybe the docs don’t drive the same car as me. Do you think the Docs could pick me up in their Lexus (Lexii?) ?” I swear I said it in a fun-loving way, but she did not see the humor so I reckoned that she probably wasn’t the right person to chat with about how badly written and confusing the instructions actually were. Instead, I hung up and called in the girlfriend troops with heavy duty 4-wheel machines and put them on warning that I might need back up and began to drink the vile liquid.

I followed the perscription instructions to the letter—one cup every ten minutes until you drink the first half of the zillion-gallon jug. The liquid loomed like an evil trough. Seriously, it was a small tributary of the Allegheny River as far as I was concerned. I’m not a big fluid kind of gal —don’t drink volumes of things I LIKE, so this was very, very hard. But I swallowed like a good soldier, and then—-nothing. I’m talking zero action. I waited an hour and begn to drink the remainder of the batch. My stomach looked like it was six months with child. It felt like there was no more room in my body, but I keep forcing it down. On the fourth go round, my body revolted and the clear liquid re-routed up and out, but obviously not from the intended orifice. I waved the white flag and waited for three more hours until the noxious liquid had had it’s way with me. Lovely, lovely time. A shit fiesta.

I woke up the next morning to a world of white—about seven inches of snow had fallen, but not enough to stop my friend Liz’s minivan and I arrived right on time. The nurse was a guy and when he asked me how I was feeling I told him that the human Drano made me puke. He said that a lot of people report feeling nauseated. “Not nauseated,” I replied, hoping he would show a little compassion. “I’m talking puke. Full on puke.” Instead, of commiserating, he stood speechless—a deer in the headlights in scrubs— and took me to a room where, before he left, he pulled some floor-to-ceiling curtains around me and told me to disrobe and put on a hospital gown. Another nurse, a female, came in for a drug discussion. I asked to be heavily sedated but not knocked out.

I don’t remember much about the procedure itself. I tried to look at the screen so I could see what the doc was seeing but it started to ebb and flow in my vision like a weird video game. I remember twice saying “Ouch” rather loudly because I felt pain. And then it was over. They gave me a clean bill of health, for which I was extremely grateful, and said come back in ten years. I asked the doc why it hurt even with the drugs and he said there were “a couple of sharp turns.” I didn’t say anything in response, but I was thinking: ‘Really? You’re gonna blame it on my colon? As a kind of colonoscopy diploma or parting gift they gave me two stapled sheets of paper summarizing the day’s activity with two pictures: one of my rectum and one of the top of my colon. I wanted to mention to them that the former is a photo no one needs to have, but instead I waited for my friend Jaimi to pick me up—a knight in shining white Honda Pilot— and escort me home.

I had told everyone I knew that I was taking the day off. No work, no emails, no texts, no chores in the mommy department, no cooking. It was ten in the morning when we pulled into my driveway and I was still pleasantly drugged and looking forward to an entire day of NOTHING. I was so happy to be under my comforter with no to-do lists in my head and no work on the docket that when my fiancee called he suggested that I make the colonoscopy a semi-annual event. It was way better than a day off because it was a day off with no expectation. I just need to figure out how to work that into my real life.