Friday, July 24, 2015

Procedure: Part I

In honor of my upcoming "procedure" I present the following never-before-published piece about my first colonoscopy. It was written in 2008, although the procedure itself took place in 1997.

The dark pink asterisk of my own a**hole rushed toward me on the monitor, and before I had time to consider what would happen next, it did, and the screen was filled with the slick and shiny tunnel of my colon. A camera, a light, suction, and forceps? All in there? I lay on my left side, loosely covered with a pink blanket, my hospital gown open in the back for obvious reasons, an IV in my right arm. “How are you, Hon?” a nurse asked me. She was concerned because I had refused the sedative for this procedure. At first I’d said no because I didn’t want the IV, but they made me have it anyway, so that they could push the drugs if I needed them.

“You have to lie very still, and there may be some discomfort,” a different nurse had told me earlier. “We’ll want to be ready if you experience too much pain.” She snapped the tourniquet, wrapped it around my arm, and tore into the sterile packaging on the stainless steel tray. I looked the other way, cringed when she said, “A little stick here,” and turned back in time to see two latex fingers pressing on a bloody gauze pad. Some surgical tape and she was finished.

“What’s the recovery time?” I asked. “How long until I can leave?”

“That depends. With the sedative, we’ll keep you a few hours until you’re alert; without it, you can leave right away.”

That settled it for me, no drugs. The preparation for this procedure had started two days earlier, and had been unpleasant enough, but the real journey had begun six weeks ago, with a routine trip to the bathroom. Turning to flush, I was startled by a distinct crimson cast to the water at the bottom of the pot. It looked like blood—a lot of blood. I felt fine though; there was no pain, no other symptoms. I hesitated before I flushed, unsure of what to do. Wait and see? Call 911? Get a second opinion?

“D!” I called. “You gotta look at something gross.”

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