Preparing for a Colonoscopy
I’ve had digestive problems for almost two years, my doctor thought a colonoscopy was due. I thought it would be routine, that I had reactions to gluten and lactose at least. The last couple of years, my digestive system started to fail. Diarrhea occurred with increasing frequency and unpredictably—it did not matter what I ate.
Writing about it is gross, but they say write about what you know.
Took six months on the wait list, thinking about doctors sticking a tube up my butt. After months of fretting, actual preparations began three days before the procedure. For the first two days, it was all about what I should not eat. On the day before the procedure, no food and two medications—two enemas. Drinking the power in water was gross.
For three hours I dreaded an explosion from my rear end. Nothing. Then, after almost four hours of waiting, kapow. Ugh. Didn’t last long. Everything in us is interconnected. An upset digestive system makes you feel ill in a surreal, oblique way.
Tomorrow, I report to the hospital at 10:10 a.m. Now, suddenly it is tomorrow. But first I have to set the alarm for six a.m. (I am not a morning person) and take more disgusting powder. I need to arrive at the hospital cleaned out, completely. Then, IV needle taped in for sedation. The doctor herself wheeled me in. I was chatting with her when someone said “I’m going to give you the happy juice now.” Suddenly I woke in another room, the procedure over.
I expected the doctor to find a routine 80-year-old gut. She did. But she found diverticulitis, which are sorta small folds which develop in the gut, where your poop gets stuck. It was ‘severe.’ That makes movements irregular, not that my movements these days are all that spiffy, especially in the morning before coffee. Now I take magnesium and something else every night to straighten my guts out. And it is, as they say, firming up. So there is light, as they also say, at the end of this tunnel.
Growing old is gross. A troublesome gut you can live with. The good part is waking up tomorrow morning.