Torturous, Tortuous, or How I Survived One More of Those Tests Everybody Hates

I'm decades beyond reproducing, but in some ways I'm a wannabe mom or grandmother, especially when it comes to reading blogs. I'm a sucker for baby pictures and anecdotes of small children saying cute things.   Plus, mommy bloggers have a ready-made subject 24/7.  Old-bag bloggers do not.  Not fair.


This week, the only thing I have to blog about is my every-five-year ordeal of having an endoscopy and colonoscopy.  Probably everyone who reads this blog has endured one or both of those, as I had, but I still found the whole process an ordeal, and I'd been dreading it for months.  ("Months!"  Jerry echoes.)

The day's menu

It sorta worked, Babs

On Prep Day, I woke up feeling anxious and picked on.  Why me?  (We're not talking logic here.)  What I wanted to feel was Sensible Resignation.

 Two things helped.  First, I thought about Barbara Bush's (punishing) mantra that you can choose to be happy or unhappy, which I don't really believe,  but I pretended I did for the day.  And the other thing that helped was to pretend I was Catholic (or Jewish, or any religion or practice where fasting is prescribed as a positive thing to do and,  more important, people survive it all the time). Also, I showered and dressed and put on make-up so that I wouldn't feel like a patient.

At 3 pm,  I drank the first of two small brown bottles of noxious goop.  It tasted salty and cloying, with a phony overlay of maraschino cherry flavoring.  At 8:30 pm, I barely made it through the second bottle. My advice is to: a) chill the bottles, and b) drink the goop through a straw.

 Ugh.

On Tuesday morning, Jerry and I got up at 5:30 am and made our way in the dark to Emeryville where there's a surgi-center owned by the doctors of Berkeley Gastroenterology.  Day after day, they perform these tests on people over 50 who are doing what they've been told they have to do. What a market!  I had a co-pay of $166 for procedures that I know from experience are billed at several thousand dollars.

By 7:30, I was stripped, gowned, and lying a gurney in a very chilly room, attached to an IV and a cardiac monitor.  The nurse hooked oxygen tubes into my nose that blasted cold air.  The warm blankets were not warm.

"If there's an earthquake, I'm screwed,"  I commented, looking at all the stuff I was hooked up to.

"Oh, we'd get you out right away," the anesthesiologist said. The nurse nodded.  I didn't actually believe them.   I thought they'd save themselves first.  Human nature.

The gastroenterologist appeared.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Cold and tense," I said.

He blew that off, cranked up some rock music, and told me they were starting a med.  The next thing I knew I was in a curtained cubicle.  It was over.

A nurse appeared.

'How are you?" she said.

"Excellent drugs!" I answered.  She laughed.  Most of the nurses were old enough to have had a colonoscopy or two, which helped.

I got dressed and scanned a written summary.  All fine, but I have "a tortuous colon," which made the procedure "unusually difficult."  A tortuous colon!  I resolved to go straight home and review the meaning of that word.*  I was vaguely proud of my colon for giving them are hard time.

Then the doctor himself cruised by and summarized the summary. When he was finished,  Jerry and I scooted out of there directly to Fat Apple's where I ate a giant, carb-loaded breakfast of pumpkin pancakes and scrambled eggs.   I rejoiced that it was over and felt so expansive that I showed the waitress my hospital bracelet and told her I'd just survived a colonoscopy.  She congratulated me;  she'd also had one, of course. Everyone has.

I lost a pound and a half, but will it stay lost?

And I have to go back in five years.

Phooey.

And because you read this far, here's a cute kid who survived his first day of kindergarten, a much bigger deal:

Note the transitional object

* "...marked by twists, turns, or bends."