It came on me fast, man. Outta nowhere. Like, one minute I’m spending quarters in the arcade at the mall, and the next minute I’m spending dollars on Metamucil at the pharmacy. I seem to spend a lot of time in the pharmacy lately. Because apparently I’m “at the age” when one does that.
That phrase gets tossed at me more often as the years go by. People are like, “You’re at the age when you should probably stop dying your hair outrageous colors like some teenager.” Or, “You’re at the age when bifocals are no longer a stigma. Really.” And, “You’re at the age when you should look at your lifetime of bad choices and at least try to do something good before your eminent demise, you witch.” But the worst one is, “You’re at the age when you should probably stop drinking whiskey with breakfast.”
Yeah, I don’t listen to any of that crap. Except when it comes out of the mouth of my doctor. I don’t know why I put so much weight on what some glorified college grad thinks I should do, but I just can’t shake the feeling that she has absolute control over whether I live or die so she should be appeased at all costs.
“You’re at the age when you really should have a mammogram.” Uh huh, I’ll do that. “And you need a bone density test.” Sure, that sounds easy. “I demand a virgin sacrifice.” You got it! “You need to see a cardiologist, a nephrologist, a neurologist, and an endocrinologist.” Okay, but this is getting kinda expensi- “You’re at the age when you need to have a colonoscopy.”
*RECORD SCRATCH*
Hold on.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not afraid of the actual procedure – I’ve had two kids after all, so I’m quite experienced with a room full of people staring at my basement door. And that tiny rectal probe ain’t got nothing on gynecological implements. The reason I balked is because I’ve heard nothing but horror stories about the preparation for a colonoscopy. The fasting, the gross liquid you have to drink, the miserable hours being glued to a toilet, the excruciating cramps, the nausea, and the high likelihood of vomiting.
But, since she had her hand hovering over that big red button that would stop me from continuing to live, I grudgingly agreed.
A few months later, we come to this week. On Sunday morning the preparation began for my Monday morning procedure with, according to the printed schedule the gastroenterologist sent me, a “light, low residue breakfast.” It didn’t say exactly what I was supposed to eat, so I had to wing it.
 |
| A banana, 8 Saltines, and a Hot Toddy |
The rest of the day was spent fasting on clear liquids. The list of what is considered “clear” kinda baffled me. Like coffee. The last time I had clear coffee was when I forgot to put grounds into the peculator. And the list includes Coke and Dr. Pepper, but conspicuously leaves Pepsi out. There’s also Jell-O on the list. Because we all know that liquid should bounce when you drop it.
I pretty much just stuck to water so I didn’t have to be a brandist.
Then at 6PM the real fun began. I had to take the first of two doses of the Suprep Colon Blow. Actually I think it’s called Suprep Bowel Prep, but eh- tomato, tomahtoh.
The kit comes with a 16 oz plastic tumbler and two bottles of Colon Blow. The doses are supposed to be mixed with water in the tumbler up to the full 16 oz mark. Fortunately I made the brilliant move of looking this up online earlier in the day and many all-knowing internet people recommended making sure all components of the dosage were well chilled before consumption. Because that little bottle of prep tastes suspiciously similar to straight up cow saliva and it being warm just hammers that home too well. Then, most importantly, you should mix the cow saliva with something other than plain water to get it down easier, by adding lemon juice or a Crystal Lite packet. Stuff like that.
I knew what I had to do.
It worked! I got that first dose down in about 5 minutes and I didn’t once think about french kissing a cow during the process. The hard part was following up with two more tumblers full of water within the next two hours as per the instructions. They even printed it in BOLD CAPS so I assumed it was probably important. However, it was during this process that I discovered my stomach will only hold about 20 oz of liquid before it bursts wide open. So I had to carefully feed it an ounce at a time as it trickled into my intestines. It was a slow, painful process but I managed. Thanks for asking.
The Internet People of Wisdom also said the “effects” started in about thirty minutes. But thirty minutes passed. Then an hour passed. Ninety minutes passed without even a gurgle or a cramp. I read the box again to make sure I didn’t take the Suprep Colon Block instead. Then the two hour mark ticked over and suddenly there were a hundred demons knocking down my basement door.
It was about three hours later that I realized my husband was going to come home in the morning after working the night shift and discover my desiccated corpse hunched over on the toilet like a Peruvian mummy. But the flood gates finally closed and I fell into bed for a few hours of sleep before the second dose at 4 o’clock in the effing morning.
So let’s just assume I lived through the second dose. Since it was pretty much the same process, with much less enthusiasm on my part. Though it felt a little more expedited since there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot left to evacuate.
At the hospital I got shuffled into a tiny room with a bed, a sheet was tossed at me, and I was told to get completely undressed. Which reminded me way too much of that one time in college… Anyway, next came the I.V. (which is another whole blog post because it took two different nurses 25 minutes to get one into a vein). Very soon after that my hospital bed was being whisked down the hallway seemingly as fast at the nurse could run, sheet flapping up in the wind like I was Marilyn Monroe, except horizontal. We skidded into the dimly lit procedure room where the man, who was about to photograph the one place on earth where a camera has never been, was snapping a rubber glove on. The anesthetic nurse turned to me and said, “I’m starting your medicine now wake up you’re all done!”
In the end, they removed a few polyps, I got an 8×10 glossy, and we stopped at Golden Corral on the way home because I was an empty husk that desperately needed filling. The food was god-awful, as I knew it would be but it’s literally the only buffet in this one-horse town. But, most importantly, it got the taste of cow saliva out of my mouth.
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