February 2024, I coined the term “pooposcopy” as I thought it was funny, and it made it easier to talk about what was looming on my horizon. I got so used to the term that I kept forgetting what the real word was. I’ve forgotten now. Maybe it’ll come back to me before the end of this paragraph.
Apparently not.
I am over 50 and so my body now belongs to the medical profession. I must have my digestive system checked, must have shingle shots. (Why are the wingnuts not worried about Bill Gates putting trackers in the shingles vaccine? Is this another case of undervaluing the senior members of society?)
COLONOSCOPY! YES! I also like “rite of passage,” but that might be a little too subtle for my audience (or me).
I should have been doing this in late 2023, but one fun side effect of losing your job here in the Land of the Free is also losing your health insurance. So I canceled my appointment and had to wait for more work before I could have my potentially life-saving preventative medical procedure. It is, as I understand it, the price of freedom and democracy.
By calling my colonoscopy a “pooposcopy,” it takes some of the sting off it - or, at least, the idea of it. Stinging anxieties such as worrying about throwing up the stuff I have to drink on Thursday evening. Like worrying about waking up after the procedure and babbling about weird shit or confessing to a series of bank robberies across the Midwest. It’s all just a subconscious attempt to avoid the actual fear: a group of masked strangers wandering around my nether regions looking for signs of cancer.
In the week leading up to my procedure, King Charles was announced to be having cancer treatment and Toby Keith died from stomach cancer. So I forgave myself for seeking solace behind silly words for serious things. The docs were going to have a peruse of my throat area at the same time, to see if my decades of heartburn had ravaged my upper piping. So, lots to ponder.
Or, as a pal suggested, I can just imagine that they’re going to medically spit-roast me. Mmmm, pork.
The week went like this.
Monday was my last day of consuming real food for a few days. I didn’t really make the most of it. Tuesday was the start of MASHED FOOD ONLY, as the instructions said. And this apparently meant NO MEAT. What about ground beef? I wondered. But I wanted to do this right, and do it once, so I accepted the spirit of the instructions and stopped looking for loopholes. Mashed food. No meat.
When I had my phone interview with the nurse on Tuesday, she asked me questions like: “Have you had a fall recently?” and “Have you had a heart attack in the last six months?” So, we know which demographic we now find ourselves in.
There are a lot of rules as you approach a colonoscopy. What you can and can’t eat…and when. I kind of like it. I now had a food schedule.
An actual image from the instructions/guidelines I was given.
Three days and two days before, just the mashed-up food. No meat, nuts, popcorn, etc. I wondered whether this is for the benefit of the doctors or for me. Is it because these foods might get stuck as they travel the Me Highway from north to south, thus blocking the view for the checkup? Or is it to make my next 48 hours easier as my whole system empties out and resets? I was to avoid anything with seeds. Is this for my own benefit as those hard, sharp little fragments use my colon like a waterslide? Or if I let a seed into my system, will this mess up the whole process, making me have to do it again?
Am I over-thinking this?
(The name of my unwritten memoir, by the way.)
Let’s take a moment to celebrate the doctors and nurses who are doing this every day. Imagine if that was your life: bums, colons, unconscious old people with questionable bowels. They’re heroes. They should have their own holiday.
So many phone calls - people calling from various offices, telling me how much this whole thing will cost me. Which is a surprise as I thought the insurance company (boo) paid for a colonoscopy? They do, one nice lady in what I bet is a nice office tells me. But I’m also getting a throat check-up…and that is not wholly covered. Nor is the anesthesia. Which I am keen on. I’m sure there’ll be more costs before I am knocked out and poked about.
I spend Thursday working and wishing I didn’t have to. I decided I’d listen to everything the Mountain Goats had ever recorded. I’m not sure they are the right emotional support for such a potentially upsetting situation, but I made my choice and stuck to it.
I was a little hungry at lunchtime, which felt worse as I knew there wasn't much in the way of filling food coming my way. I had Jello…water…chicken broth…coffee (no milk) …
My wife brought home a cake for me to celebrate post-op. Through the day, this cake became something I kept coming back to in my mind. I really like cake.
Instead of cake, I ate my first Jello of the day, thinking of childhood birthday parties, summer trifle and then, inevitably, of See you soon, old friend as I swallowed what I had to start thinking of as food.
You know what everyone says? “The stuff you have to drink is awful.” And before you have any experience in the matter, you might think, How bad can it be? Well, Thursday was the day I found out.
5pm, I took 4 bowel-loosening tablets. 6pm, I took my first 16 oz of The Liquid. The liquid that will clean you out faster than a Russian hacker in an old person's savings account. This is the “worst part” everyone says, and while it’s not chocolate milk, it’s OK. Having to drink it and then two more glasses of water was an effort, though. My stomach made little noises like a rebellion was fomenting. Or fermenting.
Within an hour, it began.
My colon cleared itself out.
Through the evening, I continued to empty out, moving from food I had eaten, then excreting all food I will eat in the future, followed by an existential voiding of the simple essence of the idea of all food of all time. Anything humanity has ever consumed, I had become the conduit for. It all ended up in the guest toilet at the bottom of the bowl. As I sat there, powerless and sad, I imagined blowing up the seat I was on and bricking up the whole room once this is all done. A small plaque on the wall commemorating what had passed here. I have also become death, Oppenheimer. I’m splitting atoms and so much more.
In two hours it was more or less done. In 8 hours, I had to do it again. Could I wake up at 3.30am and actually take the second dose? Turns out, I could, because I had hardly been asleep at all. Dose 2 went much the same as dose 1. If the taste and slightly gelatinous texture gets a bit much, a small sip of ginger ale will help reset your mouth. Or it did for me, at least.
The results after round 2 were less of a roller coaster as all the hard work happened in round 1. I was now an empty vessel: wobbly, tired, and a little raw. Ready to just be done with this whole silly business.
Friday: Of course, this is now the day that our roof is to be repaired, after waiting months, so at 7am a team of 10 descends on our house and start hammering and tearing and shouting. The dogs think we’re being attacked and duly set up lines of defense. I appreciate the effort but what I really need is a quiet and calm atmosphere. We head to the car at the appointed time, and I find some much-needed peace there.
The doc’s office is like any other doctor office. There’s a desk, a lady who books me in (although at first she says I’m not on the list for today and another one of my anxieties seems about to come true). She eventually finds me in the wrong pile and we have a nice chat about my wife’s name and how awesome she (that is, my wife) is. I pay her (that is, the lady at the doctor's office) yet more money, sign forms about non-resuscitation agreements and other fun Friday topics, and settle in to wait for my name to be called.
In less than 5 minutes, I am called. My wife is told she can’t come back with me and we’re both a little put out. I get led back through what honestly just looks like a maze of admin offices until we’re in The Place. I change into the sexy backless gown I'm given and I’m shown to my bed.
The nurses are a well-rehearsed double-act and hugely reassuring.
“I bet you had an interesting night,” one says.
“Have you any plans for what you’re going to eat when it’s all over?” asks the other.
I appreciate their thoughtful questions and how they relate to me personally.
I am assured that the lady about to put a needle in my hand is “the Michael Jordan of finding a vein.” But, it turns out, this is not true at all. I sign more forms and then…wait. I send a photo of my hand to my wife. I have a chat with the anesthesiologist. I wait some more. My feet are cold, literally and figuratively.
Another patient is brought in and given the bed next to mine, very near but hidden by a curtain.
“I bet you had an interesting night,” one of the nurses says to her.
“Have you any plans for what you’re going to eat when it’s all over?” asks the other.
The new patient is assured that the lady about to put a needle in her hand is “the Michael Jordan of finding a vein.” I silently dissent.
A young person comes to take me on a cool ride on my bed through yet more office corridors. Honestly, I do wish I felt more like I was in a hospital than a weird accountancy place…
The office where It Will Happen finally appears. It is filled with machines that go beep - and possibly an old photocopier and coffee machine in the corner. I can’t be sure as I no longer have my glasses on. Someone claiming to be a doctor tells me how it’s all going to go. Another man tells me to lie on my side. Over in the distance, more men start putting on scrubs and my mind wanders to alien autopsy/probe stories I had unfortunately been reading about earlier in the week.
An oxygen tube goes into my nose. A round plastic thing goes into my mouth. The man behind me, who can now very clearly see all of my bum, fits something into the catheter on my hand. My vision literally does that movie thing where the picture splits into wobbly panels and I find this hilarious for a fraction of a second…
A lady asks if I’d like to sit up and maybe sip some water.
Anesthesia is a miracle.
As I sip my water, the team of nurses complain about some pizza-based work issue. I struggle to open my eyes. In the next ten minutes, I fail to absorb any more information about the pizza issue (except that everyone is pretty pissed about it), but my eyes are open and my clothes are on. Hopefully in the correct order. I feel a blank relief that it's all over...especially as the nurse says I had cancer-free lower and upper tubes.
A nurse wheelchairs me to an outside area where my wife magically shows up with a coffee and a huge chocolate-chip cookie. Because she is awesome. I feel weirdly awake. The tiredness will hit later. For now, I just want to get home, to the dogs, to more coffee, to the sofa, with my family and the 10 men continuing to make a percussion instrument out of our house.
As we drive home, my wife says, “When I saw you in that wheelchair, I thought Oh god we’re old now.” I just nod.
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