Monday riddles of life/colonoscopies

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Sorry to start your week off with a riddle, but what begins at the bottom, has 5 feet, and ends back at the beginning?

A Monday blog about your colonoscopy!

Haven’t had one?

Then someone somewhere soon is about to advise you it’s time.

It could save your life. The procedure can both detect and remove pre-cancerous polyps that kill 51,000 Americans a year. That’s a tragically high number for something that could be so easily preventable if only we all agreed to take some common sense precautions.

Of course, it’s only ballpark 10,000 more annual deaths than those 40,000 poor hapless bastards killed by all-American gun violence and no one wants to do squat about that so big whoop.

Speaking of squat, colonoscopy patients should be prepared to do lots of that. They make you drink a diabolical solution the day before to make your gastro-industrial tract clean as a whistle, albeit a whistle no sane person would ever wish to blow.

Why all this talk of colonoscopies when I had mine done, oh, about three years ago?

I recently had to take a loved one in for hers. Patients are highly medicated for 24 hours so now we know just what it takes to get me to be the designated driver. So I’m sitting there all sober and observant and I was struck by how factory-like this procedure has become.

There were maybe a dozen in the waiting room and one after another they just kept coming.

To further the proctological factory analogy, it was a real ASS-embly line.

Being there amidst so many anxious patients, had me recalling my own experience. What do I remember most? I remember thinking anti-drug crusader Nancy Reagan was wrong. Drugs aren’t bad.

Drugs are terrific! Who knew having 5-feet of apparatus surgically shoved up your rectum could involve so much euphoria?

I’ve since heard an unverified bar chatter that the drugs they use to put you out for the colonoscopy are the same ones King of Pop Michael Jackson OD’d on.

It seems all too convenient: a drug they give you before they shove something up your rear is misused by a man who …

The obvious punchlines are too lazy for even me.

I’m suspicious of the pictures they give you in post-op. They tell you it was taken deep inside your very own colon.

I hate to sound like some cracker colo-racist, but they all look exactly alike. Like I couldn’t believe it when they showed me pictures of what they said were my colon. It looked so ordinary

“This can’t be mine,” I protested. “My colon is much more handsome. And if this colon is mine then where’s the mustache?”

I once did a story for Esquire about what it’s like to be a proctologist. I wish I still had it because the doctor had a great self-deprecating sense of humor. He said his friends all called him “the Rear Admiral.”

He had a bunch of other fart jokes like that and said he goes to work each day knowing he’s saving lives.

I wonder about the many people working in the Excela Health Center on Donohoe Road where we’d been sent. Every single person, from receptionist to doctor, was cheerful and friendly. If anyone was feeling occupational burnout, they kept it concealed.

I’ve been in surlier ice cream shops.

Could it be seeing the full range of humanity so vulnerable, so exposed, makes one more appreciative of our common decency?

Could it be as simple as that? Could it be a 9-to-5 exposure to real assholes somehow bestows an understanding that deep down inside — deep up inside — there aren’t quite so many metaphorical ones.

Or maybe they’re just better at turning the other cheek. It’s a Biblical sentiment for most of us, but many of them had to pass a test on the maneuver back in med school.

And that’s as good a place as any to conclude an essay on colonoscopies.

The End.

Related …

Doc pays $500,000 for colonoscopy banter

(Just this one recommendation today. I do so to encourage you to read this one. It’s very funny.)

Being upfront about my behind procedure

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Let’s today start with the end: Everything’s fine. No concerns or additional needs to undergo the procedure again.

I wanted to get that out of the way right up front because the end is a good place to start when you’re talking about the cringe-inducing indignities of what I’ll euphemistically call “the procedure.”

It’s recommended for every man or woman once their odometer hits 50. It can by then detect a deadly cancer and render it treatable. Having it done is worth the embarrassment. I’m 54 and had put it off for as long as I could.

Bottom line: It was time to get this procedure behind me.

Honest, I wasn’t even going to write about it. I don’t feel comfortable writing about things I’d rather not even talk about.

However, a buddy of mine noticed a telltale IV bandage on my right hand, is privy to my circumstances and cunningly knew right away what the procedure had to be: “Oh, man, you have to blog about it,” he said. “People need to hear it and it’s bound to be funny. C’mon! You have to!”

So consider this a sort of public service announcement and, yeah, a good chance to share lots and lots of puns about my buns: We’re talking buttloads.

You’ve probably heard the prep is the worst. That’s true. The infernal cleansing solution seems to be composed of Satan’s pit perspiration. It’s awful.

Now, I’ve drunk many awful mostly alcoholic concoctions on dares of drunken friends. I can drink anything; you probably can, too.

But there’s just so much of the solution: 3 liters — and you know it must be bad if they measure it in metric. It’s every 15 to 30 minutes another slug. That goes on for about four hours; again doable if only you knew it was going to bestow a giddy buzz.

But the end results are results in the end. You’re tethered to the toilet; so many indignities.

Then there’s this. No food for about 36 hours before the procedure. You’re home where all you do is eat. Yet you cannot. You’re starving. It occurred to me that a sad percentage of the world’s population daily endures under those exact conditions; I felt shame.

It didn’t matter. I felt resentful that I couldn’t snag a Pringle whenever I felt like it.

And, yeah, you worry the proctologist is going to at the end of the procedure say he’s found a tumor. You secretly wonder if this is what the anal prospector is hoping he’ll find. It is, after all, what he went to school for. It’s his metaphorical bread ’n’ BUTTer.

So you have that hanging over your head.

Val drove me to the Latrobe hospital at 8 a.m. and then departed to put Lucy on the bus and do her thing. She’d return at 10 a.m.

They had me naked in a jiffy and the anesthesiologist began her quizzing about allergies, medications, history, etc.; no, no, no, etc. Then it was a long naked wait. I’m very impatient when I’m naked, wanting to either sleep, screw or just get dressed. I was there for at least 30 minutes. What the hell was taking so long?

I wanted them to get off their asses and into mine.

Finally, they wheeled me into the exam room, applied the gas and did their thing.

Or so they said.

They might have played cards or spent 20 minutes commenting on their hangovers or my genitals, which I suspect they do with every sedated patient.

There’s no evidence they did anything other than anesthetize me. Sure, they said I was fine and showed me pictures of what they said were my gastro-intestinal tract, but they could have been anyone’s; seen one, seen ‘em all.

If it was a ruse, I forgive them. I mean if you can’t turn the other cheek with your proctologist, who can you?

There; I think that went well. I used 11 versions of the grammatical colons and not one of the anatomical kind which was the whole subject of this essay.

And now I’m all done.

The End.

Related …

Doc pays $500,000 for colonoscopy banter

The skinny on rectal bomb implants

My facial procedure & aversion to big ass needles

Save health care: Cure hypochondria!

Fainting again at my routine physical

Results from my first physical . . . in 18 years!

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The most disturbing revelation to arise from my first physical in 18 years had nothing to do with my health. No, it was that the father of the doctor who was caring for me is 2 years younger than her patient.

He is 49.

She’s not actually a doctor yet. She was the doctor-like person with the stethoscope who came in and asked me a lot of questions so she could brief the actual doctor before she swept in to earn the really big bucks.

I was, I know, the talk of the office. It started with the admitting nurse.

“We have no computer records on you,” she said. “Why is that?”

Well, I haven’t been to see a doctor since before there were computer records. It’s been 18 years.

“Why not?”

I haven’t been sick.

“You mean in 18 years you’ve never had an operation, needed any prescription drugs or felt sick for even a single day?”

Not if you don’t count hangovers.

“You’re a miracle,” she said. “The doctor’s going to get a kick out of meeting you.”

All this giddy stir and I’d yet to even remove my pants!

I’ve been reluctant to share this news because I know so many people struggle with chronic pain and severe illness and I didn’t want to seem like I was gloating. Why some people are sick and others not is a mystery and it often seems so terribly unfair.

It’s not something about which to joke.

Secondly, avoiding doctors for nearly two decades is potentially fatal. What if I was suffering from, say, catastrophically high blood pressure or another easily detectable disorder that would prove me a doomed fool?

Third, I couldn’t afford to be sick. I’m one of those Americans who gambled I’d always be healthy because I didn’t earn enough money to pay high insurance premiums. That all changed last year when affordable health care became available.

And thank you for that, er, Sen. Mitch McConnell!

In the examination room, the young pre-doctor doctor began her lengthy interrogation.

She asked about my family history. I told her Mom has been cancer-free since 1982, has dementia now and that Dad dropped dead of an aortic embolism in 2004. She was very polite and said she was sorry.

“Oh, don’t be,” I said. “It was an outstanding death. He was 76 and was complaining of back pain in the morning and was gone that night. It was like hitting the death jackpot. I only wish Mom would be so considerate.”

She asked about my exercise. I told her I enjoy taking long walks at a moderate pace. I told her my theory that most men my age suffer the most serious injuries in vain pursuit of improved health. They snap a tendon playing basketball or take a nasty fall when they’re out for a brisk evening run.

“That’s not going to happen to me,” I said.

She asked about my diet. I told her my paunch is becoming a concern and I need to be more vigilant about portions and stop being a handy garbage disposal for the kids who leave food on the plate; too much to toss, but not enough for leftovers.

She asked if I smoked.

I told her I enjoy one or two cigars a month. No cigarettes, ever.

Caffeine?

No coffee. But always iced tea with lunch.

Flu shot?

Not for me.

Alcohol?

“More than I should, but not as much as I’d like.”

How much?

“I’d say about 10 beers.”

“Oh, that’s not bad,” she said. “It’s good to keep it to two a night.”

“Oh, no, I meant about 10 a night.”

Every night?

“No, about two nights a week.”

Has your drinking ever hindered your work?

“Well, I’m a blogger so there’s really no way to tell.”

Has anyone ever suggested you drink less?

“No, in fact, outside of my wife, everyone I know suggests I drink more. Without fail, every time I try and leave a bar, someone always says, ‘Oh, have one more! I’m buying!’ That makes leaving awkward. If I could have figured out a way to get paid to drink I could have afforded regular doctor visits years ago.”

Without bar time, I explained, I’d snap.

I’m a very social person who by dint of my calling, spends nearly all his time all by himself deep inside his own head. No co-workers. No human contact. If it goes on too long like that, it is truly maddening and I feel like running out on a street corner and screaming.

Instead, I walk down the stairs and Dave pours me a draft and my mental balance is restored. Drinking, I know, is a curse to many individuals. To me, it’s therapy.

I was very pleased when she began asking me a lot of questions about sex. Then I realized she wasn’t asking for personal reasons. 

But I answered all her questions truthfully. The reason I won’t share the answers here is because I wouldn’t want to embarrass Val and, gee, bragging always comes off as unseemly.

It was all going so well until she nearly toppled over while testing my leg strength.

“I don’t usually need to do this seated, but I hurt my leg the other night and I’m having trouble bending over.”

I’m sorry, I said. What happened?

“I took a nasty fall when I was out for brisk evening run.”

We both laughed. She was very friendly. I told her part of the reason I’m getting a physical right now is I’m looking for a good young doctor who’ll shepherd me right through to the grave. She’d have been perfect, but she’ll likely leave Latrobe when her obligations here are fulfilled.

It’s a pity. She’s going to be a great doctor.

I was there for about two hours, answered several hundred personal questions, was poked, prodded, told to breathe deeply and say, “Ahhh!”

They checked my blood pressure, reflexes, circulation, weight, etc. I need some blood work done and am weighing whether to succumb to the indignities of their recommended colonoscopy, but it couldn’t have gone better.

They didn’t suggest any changes to my diet or say I ought to quit drinking.

In fact, I think after seeing me they might start suggesting to sick patients that they ought to drink more!

The admitting nurse told me they spend about 70 percent of their time treating people who need no treatment. They’re conditioned to whenever they feel a phantom pain rush right to the doctor and plea for pills.

I wonder if in the last 20 years, through the ceaseless ad blizzard about pharmaceuticals, competing health plans and mega-hospital patient incentives, we’ve forgotten that we can be can be our own best primary health care providers.

“Well,” the doctor said, “I don’t get to say this often, but you’re perfect. Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it!”

I wonder if a big part of my perfection is that I’ve spent that last two decades rambunctiously living while steadfastly paying no fret to all my many imperfections.

As is my habit, I’ll be at the bar this evening laughing with my friends.

I promise I’ll raise at least one glass with you in mind.

To your health.

Related . . .

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Save health care … cure hypochondria!

Doc says Mom’s not crazy (2009)

My facial procedure & aversion to big ass needles

Save health care … Dock doc pay