So...I had my first colonoscopy last week. Most of the smarter readers (Hi Mas!) will stop reading...right...about...now. But those of you who missed Katie Couric's adventures in wonderland can keep on reading.
One day I'm minding my own business and my Dr. says I need a colonoscomy, and I react like I imagine I would if judge ever sentences me to the hoosegow. "Wait, it's time for WHAT?" You sure you're not just in a bad mood or something? Is it tax season?"
So I make the appointment with the "specialist" a few weeks later. Apparently my doc is the "facilitator" or "pimp" and just sends people off to get sun shined where the sun don't shine. They give me some prescriptions that I don't pay much attention to. In fact its funny how little you focus on anything else besides the idea of Dr. Octopus slinking a tentacle into the Bat Cave.** The nurse (by the way, you try to look cool talking to a cute nurse about getting a colonoscopy), could have told me just about anything and I wouldn't have heard it because of the following thoughts going through my mind, "I'm going to get a colonoscopy, I'm going to get a colonoscopy, I'm going to get a colonoscopy, I'm going to get a colonoscopy, cute nurse knows I'm going to get a colonoscopy, I'm going to get a colonoscopy, try to look cool and not like your'e about to get a colonoscopy." Anyway, I left in a daze and put everything aside until the a few days before the "visit."
That's when I ambled over to the pharmacy and put in my prescriptions. I killed some time in the magazine section looking at all the triathlon magazines and went back to the counter and picked up a jug bigger than my head and one little white pill. "What the hell am I supposed to do with that?" says I to Katie pointing at the jug, "and I'm gonna need a whoooooole lot more pills than this little white thing to get through this." Turns out the jug is an acceptable form of patient hazing. The instructions say that you have to drink an 8 oz glass of this stuff every 10-15 minutes until half is gone the night before the procedure, and finish the rest off the morning of the procedure. Then they give you these tips. One, buy some Gas-X, two pick a flavor packet (they give you several choices, I went with cherry-now I cry every time I see one). Katie tried to do the "tie a cherry stem into a knot thing" to make me laugh the other day and I went and hid in the closet) and the coup de gras of harbingers, "It's best if the mixture is cold and you drink it fast." Yup, another case of medical speak that means, "You're going to absolutely HATE this." Sort of like, "This might sting a little means, 'This is going to feel like I just ripped off your arm and beat you with it.'" Oh, and as a PS, the instructions add, "Stay near a toilet." Ah, yes, a great night in the Elliott house.
I have never, in my life, disliked anything more than that liquid albatross. The first glass wasn't so bad. the second, ok, sure, not my favorite, but doable, then it fell off a cliff. Until the laxative (t
hat's what it is by the way) kicks in, you just get bloated. You just can't comfortably drink that much thick, foul tasting water that fast. It hurts. Then my stomach started gurgling like a bad movie sound effect, and then, well, "then" and we'll leave it at that. The rest of the night was a race between what I forcing down, and what the mixture was forcing out. Extreme bloating, release, extreme bloating, release. It became so hard to drink that going to the refrigerator felt like being called downstairs by your dad after you scraped up his car and tried to conceal it with your mom's nail polish. No, it felt like that scene in the Harry Potter movie, "The Half-Blood Prince" where Dumbledore tells Harry to keep forcing him to drink that weird liquid to get the Horcrux out of the Horcrux Cave, "no matter what, even if you have to force it down my throat and I beg you to stop." It got to the point where I would shutter going by the fridge, and it took me several attempts to drain the 8 oz glass of thick oversweet water. It even had this weird cloudy texture, I'm assuming that's what was attacking my intestines. So I spent the night drinking a foul liquid and expelling foul liquid out the other end. Good times.
The worst part was that I knew the foul, evil brew was for breakfast (I was told explicitly to get start drinking by 6 am). Awesome, alarm then cold thick hell water. Good morning to me!). I also have to face the idea that not only do I have to drink the last half-gallon in record time, but that later in the day I have to face (turn my back to?) the fact that 10.45 is when the Journey to the Center of Jason begins.
Katie and I get to the Hospital and start the check-in process. Everything's going well, I try to make a few jokes with the nurse that are so bad and met with such a "What are you talking about stare" that Katie has to step in and say, "He was making a joke." And that, ladies and gentlemen is when you know your killing it. About half-way through the Q&A, the nurse says, "What laxative did you take?" and I respond, "I dunno, whichever one you prescribed," and then she says, "Big jug, or little jug?" And this is when the record in my life narration screeches. There's a longish pause as I process this question and reply, "There was a little jug option?" Now I'm not a conspiracy type, but I'm telling you right now, and Katie will back me up, she moved right along, "Oh, you had the big jug, how did you sleep last night?" To which I replied, 
"Seriously, there was a little jug option?" Which was met with no acknowledgment of my question and she instead hit me with the "time to put you in your place" statement of, "You'll be on your side during the procedure, here's your gown." I took this to be an implied, "We can do this the hard way, or the easy way, it's up to you and your jug questions" and I quickly dropped the topic. However,
apparently I was unwilling to let this go completely. Katie said that when they wheeled me out of the procedure room, I was drugged up and loopy but asked the nurse, "Seriously, I don't understand why I didn't get the small jug." I'm telling you, the liquid prep scarred me. She also mentioned that the biggest side-effect of this particular procedure is a "gassy feeling," but not to worry, "they suck most of the gas out." At which point I think, "I'm so glad my girlfriend is here to hear this," as I'm sure we're both picturing the Doctor holding a wet-vac over my ass after he's done violating me.
But (ha ha) now it's time for the deed. I put my gown on, take some pics with my phone, make some jokes and get ready for the...well, I'm going to leave it at "the." They wheel me into a little room that looks nothing like a procedure room, more like a closet with some random medical machinery in it. I'm sorry, but when I have anything done beyond filling a cavity, I want it to look like when they fixed Steve Austin. I want lots of 
doctors in get-ups, big lights and loads of beeping things, not a walk in closet with a TV screen. I've seen better tricked out media rooms. But again, I'm really trying to avoid "the hard way" so I make more jokes with the nurses who are beyond nice and very, very good at making you feel comfortable before something wildly uncomfortable. And here's where I get my first taste of the placebo effect. When the nurse first put the needle-adapter thing in my hand, I started feeling sleepy. I thought to myself, "Wow, they get the IV drip going fast here, I can already feel it working." Fortunately, before I said anything out loud, I looked at my hand and saw that the needle-port was connected to air. And oddly, I felt suddenly more awake. I was so focused on going to sleep and getting this ordeal over, that my body took anything as a sign to go to sleep. I was so ready for a trance that the Amazing Kreskin would have me clucking like a chicken in no time. Again, I'm joking with the nurse and she says that its time for the sleepy-sleepy drug, and that I shouldn't fight it. I assure her that I'm planning on embracing sleep like a warm blanket on a winter night. And sure enough, I have just enough time to ask her if that "51" is my hr (It was. And I'm more than a little proud of that. As nervous as I felt, my heart was Terminator calm), and I was O-U-T, out.
The next thing I remember is Katie giving me some apple juice and, I'm sorry to be gross, but the most satisfying toot in my recorded history. Katie said when I "let it go," I smiled and said "I tooted" and fell back asleep. There's something like 3 billion men on the planet and she chose me. Women are weird.
So that's why I didn't bike on Wednesday.
*Or, "A different kind of PowerTap."
**Yes, yes comic geeks, I mixed the Marvel and DC universes. But having Dr. Octopus' tentacle reaching into Spiderman's Chelsea apartment just didn't have the same tone. Consider this a cross-over article.
