Reading, Writing, Thinking

So, I went in for my semi-regular physical, and Doc Trilby (as we call her around our house; she's the Primary Medical Care Officer, or whatever they call it, for both adults in residence) asked, just in passing, "Have you ever had a colonoscopy?"

I don't care how you ease it into a conversation. This is not a casual question. In fact, a couple of decades ago I had a sigmoidoscopy, where they just look at the lower parts of your bowel, and it was one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my life. Not painful, just uncomfortable. Intensely uncomfortable.

But I can just barely still count myself as being in my mid-fifties, and I should have considered the possibility of colon cancer starting about seven years ago. I am happy enough in this marriage that I'd rather stay alive, so I need to have my insides checked out.

All right, I'm not the first person I know who has had this procedure, and by the time I make the appointment I know pretty much what is going to happen, but the prep is simply not a lot of fun. For those of you who have not had the pleasure, this involves making your lower intestines nice and clean for the camera. You don't eat anything the day before the procedure (which is why so many of them are scheduled for the morning), and starting at 3 in that afternoon you start taking laxatives -- in my case, one of them mixed with 64 ounces of Gatorade.

It worked very well, let's say. The pictures are nice and clear and clean.

I was scheduled to arrive at the hospital at 9 and be done by 11:30 or noon. Then we would go out to Monell's, a boarding-house style all-you-can-eat restaurant that is in any case a favorite of ours. When one of us is especially hungy, it is an even bigger favorite. But, even though the procedure only takes about twenty minutes, when 10:30 came around and I was still waiting in the prep room, we started to suspect we were not going to be eating at noon. At least the nurses let Judy and Hinda in to keep me company.

Finally, someone came by to say that they would wheel me in in about twenty minutes. Then she came back almost right away to say that there had been a change of plans, and I was going then. Fine. Let's get this thing over with.

As the orderly rolled me in, I heard the doctor talking to the escort of the woman whom he did just before me. Something about ten or so polyps, all of which were removed. Urgh. I hadn't actually counted on that.

So they wheeled me into the room, checked my name and procedure for the umpteenth time, rolled me onto my side, and put the sedative into the IV. After that I have a vague memory of seeing a TV screen with a picture of my bowels and the words, "large, but only one." Then I was waking up.

Yes, there was a polyp. Large (ten to twenty millimeters), but only the one. Pediculated, which I'm told is a good sign. The doctor snipped it off right there and hauled it out, which meant that I could not go to Monell's for lunch. I was allowed only soft and bland foods for the rest of the day (they can't put a Band-Aid on the wound, after all). There are worse fates: there is a good Middle Eastern restaurant not far from the hospital, so I had rice and baba ghanoush.

I'm still not allowed any alcohol until Friday or so, but I got a call from the doctor last night: the biopsy came back negative, with no signs of cancer. Another doctor, a friend of ours, mentioned that if you leave them alone, nearly all intestinal polyps will, in time, become cancerous, so you do want them taken out.