A clean colon is a happy colon. Apparently, I have a happy colon. Getting that information is a relief; getting to the point where you can get that info is the trick.
Since we last talked about colonoscopy, I spent two days prepping my guts for the test and another visiting the medical center and having my innards probed. For those of my vast Internet audience who are contemplating such a screening, let me give you the bottom line:
It ain't that bad.
The prep work is the hard part. It takes 48 hours. Chugging the laxative solution mixed with ginger ale is disgusting stuff. It leaves a gag-inducing taste in your mouth that several glasses of water fail to remove. There is an alternative witches brew of laxative with lemonade, which could be better - the lack of carbonation might make it easier to drink.
Once that's down, you wait.
Your gastro-intestinal tract growls and rumbles like an old boiler. Finally, your bowels say: Go.
And you do. And again. And again. And again....
You can't eat anything while all this is going on, of course. I felt hungry, but not overly so. I did have one recurring craving - toast. I'd have given a lot for a single piece of buttered toast. That night, I dream of food. I never dream about food... odd.
Although the screening wasn't until after noon, I still had to be up for my 5 AM dose of spiked ginger ale. Back in the day, Anita Bryant on TV would chirp that "a great day begins with orange juice." It sure wasn't the stuff I was drinking.
Back to gagging, grumbling, and squirting for the last few hours, then away we go...
The nurse, as it turns out, is an old neighbor. Dan, the anesthesiologist, politely laughs while I pepper him with bad jokes.
Dan the man ticks off boxes on his chart. "Do you drink?" he asks.
"Only to excess," I cheerily reply, and then correct the statement with fact.
My Old Neighbor takes forever to find a vein and start an IV. Thanks for being careful, but...
Another nurse wanders in and opens a tall cabinet. I wish I hadn't seen that; inside is a row of the dreaded Black Snakes, one of which will soon be exploring my insides. They look sooooo long, six feet, at the least, hanging on their hooks...
The Doc, a pleasant Asian gentleman, comes in to introduce himself and make sure I know that he might rip a hole in my colon requiring major emergency surgery, but that it happens very, very rarely. Thanks for the disclosure, doc.
Dan injects two vials of drugs into my IV......
"Wake up, David," My wife instructs. It's an hour or so later.
No thanks, I'm comfortable right here. ZZZzzzzz.
I'm in a different room. No pain whatsoever, but I'm still sedated and disoriented. I don't remember getting dressed. The doc comes in, but all I remember him saying is "Everything looks good; no polyps," and he waves a page of color photographs in front of me...like I could focus? Yeah, right, whatever.
A little later, while Wifey drives me home, I eat the best tasting hamburger I've had in years and slurp a chocolate milkshake. Good stuff after two days of nothing to eat.
So, that's it. Nothing to be afraid of; no pain. We'll see if I remember that when I go back for another one in five years.
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For more info, check out the Mayo Clinic website. These days, you can probably find video of the procedure on Youtube, if you dig that sort of thing.
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