Looking inside

When you're a kid from a moderately normal family, growing up in a bland, middle class world, things could get boring if you didn't use your imagination -- thus, those of us who were readers tantalized ourselves with stories of adventure or, much better, stories of horror. 

As adults in reasonably good health, we haven't really changed -- we scare ourselves with thoughts of cancer, hospitals, medical procedures gone bad, and medical malpractice.

Or, in my case, of an imminent colonoscopy.

It had been twelve years since my last (and first) colonoscopy, and my internist shamed me into submitting to the indignity once more.  Colon cancer is one of the most preventable cancers, but many people still die from it.  It would really irritate me to kick the bucket needlessly.

With a colonoscopy, it isn't the procedure itself so much that you dread (although that, too); it's the preparation leading up to it.    And being now retired, as I wasn't the first time around, I had endless hours to dwell over the horrors of preparation that lay ahead.

Four whole days on a spartan, low-fiber diet.  Unbelievable.  How would I survive?  I had to eat smooth peanut butter on white bread, instead of chunky on whole wheat.  Special K with ripe bananas for breakfast instead of Grape Nuts with not-so-ripe bananas and blue berries.  No carrot sticks.  No fresh veggies at all, nor most fresh fruits. 

It was an inedible diet.  Well, actually, it was the diet my mother fed me as a kid.  But this is 2019. I live now in a Whole Foods world. 

And how would I live through an entire day -- the day before the "procedure" -- consuming nothing but clear liquids?  Essentially, water, coffee, Gatorade, and apple juice?  Actually, I discovered, nervous dread of my trip to the hospital made it quite easy to stick to a liquid diet.  I didn't feel very hungry.

And then there was the procedure itself.  Once trapped at the hospital and unable to escape, I was wrapped in a warm blanket, with various wires and tubes connected to me, all the while soothed by staff people who were obviously trained to handle emotional basket cases like myself.  Anesthesia always scares me, even though I remembered no problems from it twelve years earlier.

"I'm starting the injection.  You may feel a little coldness or sting around the injection site," the anesthetist finally said.  Yikes!  But huh?  I felt nothing at all.  Something's gone wrong, I thought.  The anesthesia doesn't work.  "Ah, finally, I do feel a little cold spot on my arm."  And then I opened my eyes to see my relatives grinning at me.  I was in a recovery room and all my wires and tubes were gone.

Propofol may have killed Michael Jackson, but it gets top marks from me.

I apparently am in no danger of dying of colon cancer in the near future, which pleases me.  I was out of bed, out the door, and eating a juicy, succulent hamburger and fries at my local Burgermaster within 90 minutes.

"The quality of the bowel preparation was excellent," reads the doctor's report.  So, yay for me, right? Photos of the interior of my large intestine. Yuk. Not a cave I'd care to live in.

The assisting physician thought I was "hysterically funny," according to my brother.  Perhaps an ambiguous compliment, but I'll take it at face value.

Once more, I've conquered the dread colonoscopy.  Now I can look around for something else with which to scare myself.