The Best Colonoscopy Ever
Even though I got a "Retry" - Also, I don't ever say 'poop,' so you can read this at work!
Yesterday was My First Colonoscopy, which sounds like a Fisher Price play set.
In a lot of ways, it was the funnest because I didn’t die, but also, I had been so sick the night before that pretty much anything would have been an improvement.
My body didn’t do well with “colonoscopy prep,” especially the second half, which required drinking 1 cup of Limon Liquid Regugitater every 15 minutes for two hours between midnight and 2 a.m.
It’s not that I wanted to sleep, or that I was even sleepy.
No, I was nauseated in a way that felt like if you were allowed to do tequila shots during your first trimester of pregnancy.
It was AWFUL.
And so, I arrived at the hospital at 6:30 a.m. - cold, terrified, certainly dehydrated and on about 45 minutes of sleep.
So the first thing that struck me as my sweet nurse-friend Mary led me back to my room was The Murphy Toilet.
Photo credit: Shawn “Boyfriend” Anderson
Options!
Accented by wood that screamed 1960s!, and with a sink attached, it appeared at first to be a fairly regular en suite potty setup - like maybe what you’d get in a really nice but old jail cell.
I thought that the bottom part of the “bench?” would lift up to reveal a seat, but then I tried it and the entire bottom half rocked back into the wall.
This meant you could choose!
Was it a toilet?
Or extra seating for your guests?
No Time To Investigate Further!
I wanted to keep exploring the possibilities of functional toiletry but I knew Mary was on the way back and sure enough, she came in just as I was taking off my pants.
I couldn’t explain that I had wasted time examining the Convertible Toilet that I had started thinking of as a Bathroom Futon.
(Later, my friend Elizabeth called it a Poo-ton and I just think that’s important for you to know.)
I’d gotten further delayed reminiscing about a boyfriend from the 90s who had been freaked out by me using a futon as my bed because he was uncomfortable sleeping in a place where someone might have at some point put their bum-bum.
(That boyfriend’s name was Shawn - please keep that in your Memory Palace.)
Mary returned a second time with another nurse, Q, (I’m not being mysterious - that’s what her name tag said) and they started their pre-flight checklist:
IV
forms to sign
questions to answer
Q is tall, and so while I responded to Mary’s questions, Q and I chatted about how hard it is to find pants as a tall woman. (I am 5’10”).
Q is much younger than me, so I told her about when Old Navy - dot com! - started selling Tall clothes.
It changed my life.
I didn’t need to get drafted, I just signed up.
“I decided I was just going to give them all my money so they would keep making Tall clothes,” I said as Q stuck a needle in my arm.
“And then, you know, the Super Cash thing … you buy clothes and get Cash and buy clothes and get Cash and now you’re not only enlisted, you’ve become an Admiral!”
Mary laughed and I knew I had them - this was going to be The Best Colonoscopy Ever.
Remember Shawn Who Hates Futons?
And so when Mary said she was going to go get my husband, she asked for his name.
I said “Shawn,” and then I said, “No wait. Call him … Craig.”
Boy, we were having fun now.
“Wait - Stanley! Charles! No - Edmund!” I shouted as Mary walked away.
She returned with my husband of 23 years, Shawn, who looked like maybe he had been napping in the waiting room?
He was so tired that at first he didn’t even notice the Hide-A-Potty.
So I pointed it out and asked him to please take a photo because I was all tubed up, attached to an IV and afraid to bend my elbow.
He snapped a picture, and then nodded off again, and THAT was when things got real and I started listening to recorded meditations on my phone.
All The Risks! (said very dramatically)
I was settling in under a Hawaiian waterfall when the doctor who was to perform my colonoscopy came in and said hello, and told me I probably would not die or end up with a perforated colon, but that those were risks - just FYI.
She was very no-nonsense, which I guess is what you want in a Colonoscopist.
Then she asked me who in my family had had colon cancer and I told her my maternal grandmother.
“OK. No matter what we find today, you will need to come back every 5 years,” she said.
My grandmother, bless her, smoked no-filter Pall Mall cigarettes for 65 years and ate red meat AND white bread, and I don’t smoke and have been a vegetarian since age 13, but OK.
Who was I to argue with this shiny little sunflower and her clipboard?
Dr. Anderson, Hero and Lady Crush
I know you’re waiting for me to get to the procedure part, because you want me to say, “It’s no big deal! Go next week! Go twice a year! Go just for the drugs!” (Which are … AMAZE-ING.)
But next in was the anesthesiologist, who shares my last name - Anderson.
We have a lot of those here. In fact, until recently, we had a Swedish hospital.
You would have thought they would have been the ones to use toilets that could also be chairs!
But this story takes place at a different hospital.
(You don’t know her. I met her at camp.)
Anyway, Dr. Anderson and I became fast friends because I am allergic to Everything.
She assured me I would be fine with the drugs she planned to use but added that normally, she mixes in a little lidocaine to keep the drugs from stinging as they enter your arm.
I’m allergic to lidocaine, but she assured me all would be well, it just might hurt a little when the meds were first administered.
“You can just squeeze my hand,” she said, and I fell a little bit in love with her.
And then she told me:
“You’re going to be OK. This procedure is safer than driving here this morning.”
And I said, “What about driving home?”
And she paused thoughtfully:
“You know, no one has ever brought that up before.”
And I smiled, and a single tear leaked from my left eye, and I told her: “I have anxiety.”
She was so kind, about all of this - even the crying - and it was her face I looked for when I finally got to the room where they would do the procedure.
But First - Tuberculosis
First, though, I said goodbye to Shawn, and reminded him that a copy of our will is in my sock drawer, but not the fluffy socks, the regular socks, and then they wheeled me past a dark room full of empty beds that looked like an old-timey Tuberculosis ward.
For a brief moment, I thought they did the procedures in there - right in front of all the other patients and ghosts, but then we kept going into the bright room, where I searched for Dr. Anderson.
Soon, she was at my side, and things were happening quickly and efficiently.
I saw a syringe filled with cloudy liquid, and I panicked, because I am not somebody who is allowed to enjoy drugs.
A few years ago, I got an injection of morphine and it turned into a medical emergency and they gave me Benadryl, and then, because I had been through so much, decided it was best to wait until I passed out before taking me for an ultrasound, but I was like a bull full of tranq darts.
I would NOT go down.
Instead, I shared my whole business plan for something I called “Glospital” - i.e, glamour hospital, where they play soft music and the lighting is nice and you can get a pedicure during an appendectomy.
I made my nurse a job offer and then I told her that I thought her hair was really pretty.
At this point, they took away my phone, but I told them if they weren’t going to give me any sweet, sweet ice chips, the least they could so was let me listen to a Calm app “sleep story” about Glassmaking in Murano.
They let my husband plug in my earbuds and put them in my ears, and I proceeded to share everything that I was hearing, so that no one felt left out.
This Time Was Different
This time was different, though.
“Oh - yikes,” I said to Dr. Anderson as she pushed the syringe plunger.
And she looked at me with such gentleness. “I know,” she said. “It stings.”
“No,” I countered, desperately wanting to be seen as ‘Not Difficult.’
“It just smells terrrrrrrr …”
***
And then, I woke up, and saw “Murph, The Can that Can Be Anything!?”
No?
And my doctor burst in and was VERY put out.
“Unfortunately I could not do the procedure,” she said.
I had been secretly concerned about this because I had heard the horror stories - when Colonoscopy Prep doesn’t work.
This had happened to a relative, and so every time someone called me from the Colonoscopy Office, I told them I was afraid of this, and so they switched me to a special “low residue” diet - (ew, David.) for 5 days where I was allowed Butterscotch Pudding but not popcorn.
Then they told me to do clear liquids only for a day and a half, instead of the regular one day.
I Failed My Colonoscopy
But despite my best efforts and carefully following directions, I had failed my first colonoscopy.
The doctor acted like I had really messed up her upcoming weekend.
She gave me a piece of paper that said “Poor Colonoscopy Prep,” which felt a little judgy after all the barfing, and instructions to come back in 6-8 weeks.
Next time, they will give me a different kind of prep liquid and anti-nausea drugs, she said.
I was foggy from anesthesia, so I turned to Shawn and asked him if this was all a joke or a dream.
He said no, but that’s what Dream Shawn might say, so I decided to give him a complex riddle to solve:
“Tell me the names of all our cats!” I demanded, as if Dream Shawn wouldn’t know.
Gosh, it’s hard - being so clever.
These Poor People
I kept apologizing to all my friends - Mary and Q and especially Dr. Anderson, who had protected me from my own immune system.
They kept telling me that it wasn’t a big deal, and that “it happens more than you think,” and then I broke out in a rash from the adhesive they had used to strap on the little sticky heart monitor squares and Dr. Anderson was back, and telling me to take some Benadryl and not to worry.
They helped me into a wheelchair and a volunteer rolled me outside and tried to make small talk - can you imagine - if it was your volunteer job to make small talk with people who just had a colonoscopy?!
And once I was settled in the car, I checked my phone.
My procedure had started at 8, and I had a missed call and voicemail from the colonoscopy office at 8:35, asking me to call back so that I could reschedule.
I guess things happen pretty fast in the ol’ Colonoscopy-Tuberculosis Ward.
She’s Like a Rainbow
I arrived home pretty amped up.
Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to go back to that beautiful feeling of surrender when Dr. Anderson first pushed the plunger on her giant syringe, but I couldn’t.
I was too disappointed. In my colon and myself.
The only way to fix this was to do it again, and get it right. I called the office and made an appointment, which I added to my Google Calendar.
Then I snuggled into bed, and Shawn fell asleep beside me, but I couldn’t settle in.
My cat Pablo and I watched a bird documentary, and hours later, I assumed all the drugs were gone from my system.
But then I closed my eyes, and my thoughts turned to stained glass - all swirling color and gold piped outlines.
It was beautiful.
This is what I thought things would feel like, post-colonoscopy - a slow, technicolor recovery.
I deserved to hear that Murphy Toilet talk, I thought, and to see a glowing halo around Dr. Anderson.
But my doctor, frustrated, had broken the magic spell.
I get it. If you have a job you love, you never work a day in your life, and so I understand - I had failed to do my part. When this happens, even the best, most committed doctor may for a moment wish she had chosen a different path - maybe poetry, or painting …
I just wish she knew how hard I tried to get it all right.
Not just this colonoscopy, but like - life.
Colonoscopy II - This Time Get Rid of Poo
I wrote most of this story in the haze the day after my colonoscopy.
That was a while ago now, and since then, I realized that when I rescheduled my procedure, I put it in my phone calendar as “Colonoscopy II - This Time Get Rid of Poo.”
I’m not looking forward to next time, but I will say that having tried and failed once, next time, I won’t be so scared.
I will know it’s OK to enjoy the part where you drift off …
And hopefully this next time it will all work, and I will get to see everything made of rainbows.
For now, I must practice self-forgiveness, and pick up my new colonoscopy prep medications at the pharmacy.
And I have to remember …
We don’t ever really fail, even at colonoscopies.
We just learn and grow, and if we’re lucky, end up with a story to tell.
We’re gonna need a part two. Pun intended.
I tried old school prep. Puked red on my mom's white carpet and told her I'd rather croak.