For my 50th birthday in 1999, my darling wife of 26 years informed me in her "nurse" voice that I needed to get a colonoscopy because I have family members on both my mother and fathers side of the family who've died from cancer. To reinforce the urgency of her statement, she began rattling off the names of my relatives that have suffered from this nasty disease like a tobacco auctioneer. My wife's 100% right. I needed to get this took care of, the sooner the better, but I've got these lingering thoughts of what I've been told by my friends and some of the horror stories I've heard on television or read in magazines and newspapers. This whole process should really be a no brainer for cryin' out loud. But all those images of having something shoved up my ass far enough to go pass my lungs and rest on my chin, well, that just didn't make it any easier to get my mind right about all of this.
This whole process of anus drilling started a few months earlier when an internal body part of mine started giving me fits and I went to our family doctor, Scott, for a check up. Now, my wife and I have known Scott for years and he was more of a buddy than my doctor, but when he told me that because of my age and family history, he needed to do a sigmoidoscopy on me. Every muscle in my body went limp. I'm fairly certain that my facial expression resembled that of a glazed doughnut. The dog's are barkin', the front porch lights are on but ain't nobody home. If you've never had the profound pleasure of having this procedure performed on you, then by all means let me explain it to you in a language I understand and speak very well. First, you hop on this cold stainless steel table with nothing on but your socks, lay your naked chubby wrinkled butt down and then you're instructed to "roll over on your left side". Second, the doctor and his nurse assistant, affectionately known as Attila the Hun, lay the back of your paper gown on your side exposing your naked butt for all to see and then proceed to insert a sophisticated bicycle pump hose way up your butt and shoot enough air inside your abdomen to inflate every tire on a fleet of school buses. Oh baby, my abdomen felt like Mount St. Helen's preparing to explode!! And finally, adding insult to injury, the Hubble Telescope is then inserted and the doctor begins the process of looking at everything in the lower colon, which by the way seems to take him hours to do. A few weeks later Scott sends me a letter stating that everything was fine, but since I was turning 50 very shortly, I needed to get a colonoscopy just to be sure all is well. Oh joy, oh rapture. I...just...can't...wait. In fact, I'm sitting on the very edge of my chair in great anticipation of this marvelous upcoming medical event.
Since Scott is my primary physician, he then sends me to a friend of his that's a couple of miles away and this guy is going to be my proctologist for the next stage in my life's ongoing saga of When Will It All End. I don't recall his name right off hand, but I do remember him having a strong jaw line like the actors James Dean and Charles Heston, with hands the size of a damn catchers mitt and a sense of humor that was no where to be found. I thought to myself "Oh this is going to be just peachy! Gee, I'm going to have Dudley Do Right perform my colonoscopy, nurse Rachette assisting, Phyllis Diller as my anesthesiologist, with the gang of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid manning the operating room. What could possibly go wrong?"
As per the instructions from Dr. Dudley Do Right, the day before my colonoscopy I began my preparation by not eating any solid food whatsoever; all I had was beef broth, which tastes like warm, brown, salty water that leaves a horrible taste in the mouth. Luckily for me, before I engaged in my next step I had talked with my middle brother Chet a few days before, who had already had a colonoscopy earlier, and he gave me some fantastic advice. He said, and I quote, "Whatever you do, under no circumstances should you start drinking that powered water they've given you during the evening hours. When I had my colonoscopy I didn't start drinking that nasty stuff until about 9pm and from that point on, I never got off the toilet, much less get any sleep."end quote. So, Doctor Frankenstein and his side kick Igor neglected telling me about this part of the preparation. Big joke! Ha, Ha! Watch him fill his bed with tra-lah-lah!!! White man speak with forked tongue. Hope many buffalo run through his teepee and take a powerful dump!!
I took off from work at noon the day before my colonoscopy and went home to begin a process that would bring discomfort and annoyance in my foreseeable future. I took the two packets of powdered Go Lightly Laxative and mixed it in an empty plastic milk jug with lukewarm water. Once the magical concoction was mixed, I then had to drink 12 ounces of it every 15 minutes until it was gone. I discovered when purchasing my Go Lightly Laxative that it came in two, and only two, flavors: cherry and lemon. I chose the lemon flavor, but I can assure you in all honesty and without any fear of contradiction there was nothing about it that remotely resembled lemons at all. It was more like a potion of furniture polish and melted crayons, with just a splash of lemon. And before I go any further, I just wanted to say that whoever in the pharmaceutical industry thought giving a product of this caliber a name like Go Lightly or MoviPrep Laxative was humorous, they are sorely mistaken in all categories. Sick bastards!!!
While mixing the toxic ingredients of my Go Lightly at the kitchen counter, it reminded me of the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty where the wicked witch Maleficent was preparing her poisoned apple for the princess. Before I started drinking my concoction, I double checked the bathroom to ensure there was an ample supply of toilet paper - check; placed two new cans of orange fruit aerosol spray next to the sink - check, move the end table and lamp so that I've got a clear view of the television while 'sitting on the throne' - check. I'm not going into graphic detail about everything that took place in my tiny room of anguish and swirling ceiling, but I will say that my legs went numb on more than one occasion from sitting too long and the hair in my nostrils and face fell off as if I were at ground zero of a nuclear blast. I eliminated everything from my bowels that I had ingested since childhood and I had so much watery substance shooting out my backside, that by the 7th cup of Go Lightly I had to switch from the family favorite of Charmin toilet tissue to using cotton balls. I was so sore and raw by the time my wife and son got home, I was walking as though I had a loaded tractor-trailer parked sideways in my butt.
I've never been able to understand why every time a person has surgery of any kind at a hospital, you must arrive at a ridicules hour before the sun comes up in order to start the preparation process. After filling out more forms and papers than it takes to enact a law from Congress that basically stated I understood and agreed with what the forms said, I was taken to an area that had approximately 20 empty beds with little curtains around each of them. At this point my recovery nurse, Helga the Crusher - her professional wrestling name, told me to get completely undressed and put on one of those back-less cloth gowns that in no way hides any part of the body from the neck to the back of the knees. Every dangling part of my body sucked up inside my stomach for warmth, because the temperature in the recovery room was cold enough to hang sides of beef. My lovely wife tired of hearing my teeth chatter and watching my breath crystallize, grabbed a couple of blankets off the bed nearest me and covered me up. Shortly there after my nurse Helga came and put a needle in a vein on my left hand and started a drip of this wonderful drug called Versed, which not only knocks a person out completely, but should you wake up during the procedure, you won't remember a damn thing. Oh yeah, Versed is a friend of mind whenever I've got to be operated on.
When all the equipment and staff in the procedure room were ready, and I had multiple drops of Versed in my veins, I was wheeled into this room that had a lot of monitors and large lights. There to greet me in their surgical scrubs and masks were Dr. Dudley Do Right, nurse Rachette and Phyllis Diller my anesthesiologist. The gang of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid arrived a few moments after me and I could hear them talking among themselves while shuffling medical tools, when Phyllis Diller said "Goodnight Jim."
The next thing I know my wife is leaned over and kissing me on the cheek. Nurse Helga pulled the curtains back and asked how I was feeling. Other than my mouth being very dry and tasting as though the entire 3rd Marine Division had marched across my tongue, I felt great. Helga told me that I would have to stay in bed for another 30 minutes for the Versed to wear completely off; however, I could have anything I wanted to drink - juice, water or coffee. I said "Coffee would be great! And I take my coffee just like I do my women -- hot and racy!!!" Were it not for the fact I was still under the influence of Versed, I'm positive my darling wife would've punched me so hard that by the time my big ass hit the ground my clothes would've been out of style. Yep, I certainly dodged the bullet on that one. While sipping on my lovely nectar of the Gods (aka coffee), Dr. Dudley Do Right walked over to my bed and said he found only two polyps and that he would send them off to the laboratory for testing to determine if they were cancerous. It didn't take that long for him to have the results and I was cancer free!!! Whew!! Was I ever glad this was over.
Now, on a personal level. Getting a colonoscopy is only as scary as your imagination makes it. There are mountains upon mountains of evidence that prove by getting regular check-ups with your doctor and having a colonoscopy starting at your 50th birthday is a step in the right direction in beating cancer....do NOT hesitate. See your doctor...have it done...and be around to love your family. You and you alone are in charge with this part of your destiny.
