Sunday, July 26, 2015

Procedure: Part III

Finally, after a few questions and a rectal exam, my GP wrote a referral for a gastroenterologist and ordered some blood work. She said everything seemed normal to her, but you couldn’t take any chances with my family history. The gastro guy, Dr. H., was highly recommended, though; “He’s very gentle.” When I saw him ten days later, he told me that the results of all my labs were normal, but a colonoscopy was indicated, anyway. It would be another two-and-a-half weeks before he could fit me in.

A week before I was finally going to get scoped and find out once and for all whether there was anything to worry about, the dark red color appeared again. I examined it closely. It looked suspiciously like the beets I had eaten for dinner the evening before. When I was growing up, my mother never served us beets; I don’t think she likes them. A month or so ago, I’d been to dinner at a friend’s home, and he had served a delicious salad with roasted beets, haricots vertes, and goat cheese. It was so tasty, in fact, that I had made the salad myself, just last night. Hmmm, I wondered. How thoroughly do we digest beets anyway?

In my mind, the mystery was solved, but the colonoscopy was still on the calendar. Two days before it, the preparation began, a clear liquid diet. How bad can that be? I thought. There are many clear liquids, and I was totally up for the challenge. For example, I strained Thai hot and sour soup as a much more flavorful alternative to plain chicken broth, and wine is definitely clear, but after a couple of meals, I found out that the main problem with clear liquids is that they are not satisfying. I wanted solid food. Forty-eight hours on a liquid diet would have been bad enough, but the clear liquids are really only to ease the second part of the preparation: the cleanse.

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