Okay, everything you’ve heard about having a colonoscopy is right.

It’s not bad.

And it can save your life.

I was a big baby about it, the way I am about a lot of medical stuff I don’t want to think about.

Even the prep, which everyone says is the Very Worst Thing in the Whole World, was not that bad. I was given pills instead of the yucky liquid stuff, thirty-two pills, to be exact, with specific instructions as to how to take them.

The worst part by far was the dreading…and oh, yeah, fasting all day yesterday wasn’t so great. I kept forgetting that I wasn’t supposed to be eating, and would find myself thinking, “Ah, I know what I need! Some crackers!” And starting for the kitchen before I remembered…ah, yes, there’s a reason I’m so hungry.

All day, I felt like I was in some kind of countdown–four hours until I have to start the prep…three and a half hours ’til prep time…oh, NO! IN TWENTY SHORT MINUTES I HAVE TO TAKE FOUR PILLS THAT ARE GOING TO MAKE ME FEEL JUST AWFUL ALL NIGHT LONG, AND AFTER THAT I HAVE TO TAKE 16 MORE OF THEM AND THEN 12 MORE OF THEM TOMORROW MORNING! AND THEN WHAT IF I GO TO THIS APPOINTMENT AND IT TURNS OUT THAT I HAVE COLON CANCER THAT IS SO FAR ADVANCED THAT THEY CAN’T CURE IT AND I SHOULD HAVE COME IN YEARS AGO BUT I DIDN’T?

(One of the little known perks of being a writer is that you can always get to the worst case scenario in 0.2 seconds.)

But then the time came and I just did it. Told my crazy monkey mind to take the night off and go off somewhere, and I took the pills and spent the evening reading a very good book and admiring the decor of our bathroom.

I woke up in the morning before the alarm went off at 6 and took the rest of the pills, admired the decor some more, re-told the monkey mind that we would be NOT thinking about colon cancer anymore this morning…and by 9:20, we were on our way to the Endoscopy Center.

Once there, I was fine. The nurses were all chatty and nice. We discussed books we were all reading; one of them had read one of my novels, and we talked about that. We talked about where we get our hair colored and how awkward it is to break up with a hairdresser. I put on a hospital gown, and they started a saline IV and filled out a questionnaire about my health.

I was a little taken aback when one of the nurses asked me, as part of routine questions, if I had a Living Will. I must have looked startled–I mean, this is just a colonoscopy, right?–because she leaned over and touched me on the arm and said, “Don’t worry. Your Living Will wouldn’t count for anything here anyway. If anything goes wrong, we are going to revive you!”

Oh. Good then.

We moved along to the room itself, and I was told to lie down on my left side on the bed, underneath the sheet. We talked about all the good food I was planning to eat later on, and then the doctor came in and asked me how I felt.

The nurse said, “Okay, we’re ready to get started.” She smiled at me and said, “Good night! You’ll be back in thirty minutes!”

And everything suddenly went black. No fading out, no count to ten. Just–GONE.

The very next moment the doctor was standing at the foot of my bed, speaking loudly: “I HAVE NOTHING BUT GOOD NEWS FOR YOU!” And my husband was sitting next to me, and it was 35 minutes later.

I got up and got dressed. Everything had gone well, he said. He did remove two tiny little polyps that looked absolutely benign, nothing to worry about, he said.

“No evidence of any cancer,” he said and smiled. When I had had my consultation in July, my mother had only been dead a month, and I was shaking the whole time we talked.

I have to go back again and have another in three years, due to the family history. But next time I won’t be scared. 

  

 

Technorati tags: