The Joys of Colonoscopies

Like a good doobie, when I turned 50, I made an appointment for my colonoscopy.  A cancer you can totally prevent?  Im in.  Let’s set aside for the moment that the general area of the colon is NOT my favorite body part.  And the idea of someone excavating down there -- well, let’s just say I’d rather prepare income tax returns for my entire cul de sac.

When I scheduled the appointment, however, I hadn’t focused on the fact that it was the day after ten of us college buddies would gather at a Wisconsin lake house to celebrate turning 50.  It’s important to note here that my in-laws had decided to plan a last minute visit to our house that same weekend.  My husband would be hosting alone.

On the day before the procedure, I woke up like Henry the 8^th, bloated with gout-like symptoms from massive amounts of cheese, wine and food.   The instructions called for me to fast.  By the time I rolled into my New York home from Wisconsin, although I was starving, my lower abdomen still protruded, like a pig in a blanket, from the weekend festivities.  The anticipation of drinking the noxious cocktail that would scrub every molecule from my intestines had me in a foul mood.

I take the pills and chug the bottle of swill, which tastes like carbonated Dead Sea mingled with Lemon Pledge. I gag, unpack, and begin to cook dinner for the family and Bob’s parents, which I am forced to stare at but cannot eat.

Bed time.  Nothing yet.  The combo of cheese, bread and pasta that I have consumed all weekend has clearly fastened itself to my innards like grout.   I somehow manage to fall asleep—but it is the sleep of the wary, a one-eyed kind of sleep.  By 2:00 AM, small rumbling things are happening somewhere in my digestive tract.  We might have the makings of explosive diarreah, I think grimly, a term I once snickered at and is now too painfully personal to find humorous.  This, I know, will be me in a few short hours.  The butt of my own joke.  Literally. 

Sure enough, at 3:00 in the morning, my abdomen begins to emit the dreaded Orca the whale sounds, calling from one end of my intestines to the other.  I sprint for the toilet and spend the next three hours grimly running between bed and bowl, hoping against hope that there is no damage to the new bedroom carpet.  Suffice it to say that the “cleansing process” as they call it—something that evokes gentle loofas and essential oils, has the vengeance and frothing rush of an airport automatic flush toilet.  How humbling, I realize, to endure the entire liquefied contents of your entrails flying out in one Old Faithful-style geyser blast.  

Too old for maxi pads and too young for Depends, I realize that some kind of physical protection would help me sleep.  Military body armor would be welcome here. This is what leads me to the low point of raiding my daughter’s bathroom closet for feminine hygiene products to fashion, with sticky strips, a thong adult diaper.  Don’t ask.  Let me just say that this invention allowed me a few more minutes of sleep and eased my transport and mobility worries the next day.

The next morning, however,  I learn that my in-laws are not in fact leaving.  They are here for another whole day. NO one has factored my colonoscopy into the scheme of things. This is when my husband thankfully decides to take the morning off work, dump me at the doctors, take them to breakfast and pick me back up.

Starving doesn’t begin to describe it.  At breakfast I had reached hunger levels critical enough to munch my own back fat.  And this made me grumpy.  My mother in-law, who is having memory issues, was unable to grasp the facts.  Who is going to the doctor?  Me, I answer calmly in the car on the way there.  Now why are you going to the doctor?  A test,  I answer again,  After the fourth time, my fatigue, my hunger and my lack of patience cause me to snap.

“Mom, I drank some horrible liquid that made me poop all night and right now your son is taking me to the doctor so he can put a stick up my butt and make sure I don’t have cancer.”  Well, that was a showstopper for the whole car.  Thankfully we had just pulled up to the curb so I could hop out.  Delicately hop.

The anesthesia was sweet, liquid sleep.  I would have endured five colonoscopies in a row if I could just stay under a little while longer.  Hormones, kids, schedules and work….. what low point was I at in my life that a medical procedure where I got to be unconscious was sounding like a spa visit?

But when I woke, abruptly, with a nurse shaking me, the misery of the situation hit me.  My first hazy thought, as I looked at my paper gown and realized grimly that things were still “cleansing,” was that I had fast forwarded in life and had been admitted to a state-owned nursing home, lying in a pile of my own excrement.  As my head tried to clear itself from the cloud of anesthesia, I looked at the nurse suspiciously.  Were they going to feed me cat food next?

“Boy, you have a long colon,” the doctor said to me in our little post-op chat where I was dressed but still slightly out of it.

“Really?”

“Yeah! A lot of colon packed into that abdomen.”   I’d be sure to remember that fun fact for my next cocktail party.

“Does that mean I’m full of crap?” I asked.  Ooops. Had I said that out loud?  Clearly the anesthesia was still affecting my filter.  He smiled lamely. He’d heard it all.  But Mother of God I wished and hoped for this man that he got to do other, fun things with colons; surgeries maybe, transplants, research, anything but being elbow deep in people’s poop all day.

Exhausted now and back at home I try to sleep. But sleep will not come because I know Bob’s parents are downstairs and I’m channeling the same low-level anxiety I had about crating our new puppy.  Like all older people temporarily displaced from their own homes, they have absolutely nothing to do. I can hear them downstairs ricocheting off furniture like a pin ball machine.  And what if Bob’s Mom burns the house down with her cigarettes?  I rise. I go downstairs.

“Lets go to Costco,” I say with false cheer. This excursion will serve two masters.  My mother in law loves to shop. And we have no food. This is how I found myself, hours after my first colonoscopy, loading grosses of Gatorade, pounds of grapes, frozen sausages and steroidal boxes of Captain Crunch into my giant cart, lurching slowly down the aisles.

“You’re like the peasant women in Pearl Buck’s, The Good Earth” my husband joked to me on the phone later when I tell him about my afternoon.  He’s referring to the part  where the Chinese woman squats and gives birth in the rice paddy and then goes right back to work picking.  Yes, I thought with the Celtic pride of my immigrant ancestors,  it was a bit like that, minus the placenta.

“So that’s a relief. ” My husband says. “No cancer.  You got that one behind you for ten years.”

“Well, not exactly,” I said, recalling the little post-op chat with the doctor. 

“Why don’t we make it seven, just to be safe,” he had offered.  Ten seems like such a long time.”  Oh the joys of getting older.

WHEN I AM OLD

I will buy new towels and sheets. I will not use threadbare and frayed ones just because I have them. I will use all my lotions and potions and I will burn candles. I will not save things for later. I will tell everyone how much I love them whenever the mood strikes — and I will tell them when they do little things that amaze me; simple things they may do every day. I will buy new dishtowels and kitchen sponges regularly and they won’t smell.

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Rubber Chicken

I’m just on my way back from a luncheon where I’ve been the featured speaker and have hopefully said something vaguely inspiring or coherent. I’m beginning to think I no longer sound very coherent. Or maybe I’m just sick of hearing myself talk. As someone who talks to various groups around the country --- I have become an unexpected connoisseur of rubber chicken luncheons and dinners. You name a chicken dish – I’ll bet I’ve eaten it--- at least the American version. Who knew there were so many ways to prepare, disguise or gussy up poultry? As I walked in the ballroom, the flower arrangements were bright and spring-like. People invest a lot of time and energy on these centerpieces and they learn to be pretty darned clever when there is a tight budget involved. A couple of carnations can go a long way. During the VIP cocktail portion, there were the coterie of well-dressed women in dresses and suits. We shook hands and traded pleasantries and I thought to myself………. Chicken. They’re definitely going to serve chicken. $100 bucks says I’m right. But of course I couldn’t bet with the organizers—that would seem ungrateful. And I wasn’t ungrateful. But I was correct. There it was in all its’ baked and crumb-sprinkled glory, swimming in its own pool of hardening sauce. Here’s the thing. I never really liked chicken to begin with. It was always my mother’s fall back position meal growing up. And somehow my mother, who is no Julia child but has many other talents, always seemed to overcook it. My image of chicken isn’t a succulent, falling-off-the- bone, flavorful bird; it’s the chicken of my childhood, with the bejesus baked out of it and without the dignity of even a dipping sauce. My image of chicken is dry, stringy white breasts. Come to think of it, not unlike my own image of myself at this age and stage of life. When I go out to eat in a restaurant, I’d rather order ANYTHING than chicken. OK—pizza, even the stylish Wolfgang-Puckish kind is actually very last on that list. This is amateur food, stuff I have served to my kids for years. Chicken nuggets, pizza, mac and cheese are staples in my home kitchen and I’m not paying real money to have someone present me with the same old same old. When I go out to eat, I want to order something I cant and don’t make, something that seems to involve labor and ingredients I don’t have in my pantry. So, how is it I have found myself in the ballrooms or meeting rooms of hotels and corporations and universities around the country for the past few years and it seems we always eat… chicken. Occasionally there has been a salmon or rarely some beef. Once or twice even pork—a religious risk, I’m sure, in some towns. I have begun to dread the dramatic moment when the banquet trays come out stacked with the silver plate covers. Chicken, I think to myself. How will they dress it up today? I’ve stuck a fork in baked chicken, chicken tetrazzini, chicken cordon bleu, chicken teriyaki, chicken stuffed with spinach, chicken Hawaiian, and chicken Caesar salad. No one has tried to do chicken fingers at a group event yet but that’s probably because no one has had the guts. Chicken is easy and cheap. Forget about the loaves and the fishes. Jesus would have gotten more bang for the buck with poultry. He could have fed more folks and franchised a whole heck of a lot easier. Recently I was sitting next to the mayor of a city where I was speaking. “Let’s see what they do to the chicken today,” he said, and I perked up. A fellow traveler on the rubber chicken circuit, I thought. Of course—a politician. Who else would understand instinctively, the dismay and trepidation when the server lifts the metal lid off with a flourish? “So have you thought about how much chicken you eat in a given month at these things? I asked. “You must have to eat a heck of a lot chicken.” He laughed out loud. I liked this mayor. “Most of the time I don’t even eat it, “ he confessed. He explained that as mayor he often had to go between three lunches at a time. That much chicken would make even a politician lose his grin. Or grow feathers. “You ought to keep a rubber chicken diary,” I said, and he laughed. “I ought to take picture of each of the plates of chicken with my iPhone,” the mayor chuckled. “You could post them on your iCal,” I ventured. “Kind of a memento of your time in office.” I liked that the mayor was a Mac person. It gave him edge. The glasses clinked and it was time for the speaker to take to the dais and so we quieted. I pushed my chicken around in its gooey Elmer’s Glue-esque sauce. I noticed the mayor didn’t touch his. He made some vague motions with his knife, cleverly cutting, pushing and doing a fork-fake. He moved a few bits under the rice for emphasis and took a swig of his iced tea. At the airport later that afternoon I grabbed a bag of chips and some Twizzlers. They would be my bad girl stand in for lunch today. Kind of a punishment and a reward for the rigors of travel. God forbid the airlines dispense anything edible these days. Times were tough. As I hustled to the gate and ducked in the ladies room to change out of my heels and into my jeans on the way to Denver—I breezed past a Chik-Fil-A, with people lined up for chicken-related snacks. An image of the mayor popped unbidden into my head. By now he’d be home flipping through the TV channels in some sort of high-end barka lounger, a drink in hand. I pictured him asking his wife what was for dinner, calling into the kitchen absentmindedly from his den. “Barbequed chicken!” she might answer. And he would wince, ever so quietly in the calm of his study. And then he would slowly let out his breath.

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