Look Ma, No Polyps! Or: Wenty Tries To Tell About His Colonoscopy Without Grossing Everybody Out
Did you know that February is National Colorectal Cancer Month? Well, it is. So my timing in getting a colonoscopy is excelllent. (Honestly, I had nothing to do with the timing. My nephrologist (kidney doctor) told me I should get one. So I got one. I unfailingly do whatever my kidney doctor tells me to do.
I got the procedure done at Regional West Medical Center. For the record, I have never–not once–had a bad experience at Box Butte General Hospital. But when my doctor says “Go to Regional West,” well…I go to Regional West.
Of course, before the actual colonoscopy is the pre-game show. It involves The Solution®: a giant empty jug with a pile of mysterious powder on the bottom. You pour water into the jug, mix same, and set yourself to drinking. The Prime Directive of The Solution® is to create an expressway to your butthole. (I’m sorry, that’s terribly tacky. But the phrase “expressway to your butthole” made me laugh when I typed it. I am easily amused.)
So I set up shop and began the chugging of The Solution®. And you do have to chug it, they specifically cast aspersions on sipping. They were nice enough to include a little packet of lemon flavoring. I appreciated the gesture. But the truth is, you could shove 14 lemons and a pound of sugar into that death slurry and not notice any improvement.
I was slightly anxious* at first because the chugging did not seem to be doing the job. But after the third or fourth chug…Ladies and gentlemen, the Governor William J. Le Petomane expressway is open for business!
I shant go into detail.
Suffice to say that if you are familiar with a certain scene in the film “Dumb And Dumber” you get the idea.
*Anxious! I knew I had to finish an asterix here somewhere. I have what I have recognized as “default anxiety”. If something can make me anxious, it by God will. “Default anxiety.” I should get a copyright on that.
So with day one behind me, I went to bed–hungry as hell. (You can’t eat before you have a colonoscopy. I mean… you could but the doctor would probably be pretty ticked off.)
Day two! Regional West Medical Center! This part was easy peasy. I went into my hospital room. They hooked me up with wristbands and IV and oxegyn tubes and so on and so forth. (The smell of oxygen tubes took me straight back to my stay at Poudre Valley in 2023. Isn’t it amazing how something as simple as a smell can do that?)
I also answered the cavalcade of medical questions. It’s like a Johnny Carson anniversary special but instead of Ed Ames’ tomahawk throw you get the story of my fistula. Not quite the same entertainment value.
Eventually, they moved me into the operating room. I gotta tell you, I’m getting pretty cavalier about these medical things. This is my 4th or 5th visit to an OR. It helps that I don’t have to experience any aspect of the procedure. I was out like a light. And I mean OUT. No dreams, no semi-coherence, just plain gone.
And eventually they woke me up. Or I woke up. And they had me get dressed and sit for a half an hour. That seemed odd to me until the first time I stood up and felt weeble-wobbly. At some point I mentioned being able to get a hot chocolate before my transit vehicle drops by. Well, a nice lady nurse put me in the wheelchair, took me down the elevator, to the 1sr floor coffee counter, and let me buy a hot chocolate. Then moved me back to my room. How nice is that? (For the record, the hot chocolate you drink after going 30+ hours with no food is the greatest hot chocolate of all times.)
The good news is that my colon is in fine shape. No polyps, nothing cancerous. I love a happy ending. My dismissal papers say I should have another colonoscopy in ten years. Perhaps by then I’ll have forgotten how gross The Solution® is.