The Colonoscopy Diaries, Are you there god? It’s me, Milly. The Diary of a Wimpy Colon
Captain’s Log 5:39 am Sunday: I’ve been awake since 3:45, more out of nerves for this morning’s bridal shower bakes than anything. This theory proved wrong 20 minutes into the bake time when I realized the oven was set for 375 instead of 345, but alas, I was charging ahead with the pages of paperwork dedicated to “how to cleanse yee old colon”. I’m stuck. There are too many directions. My friend Peter told me to start at 5 pm and the paperwork backs up his theory. But, alas, this puts me on the toilet until approximately 11 pm, some 3.5 hours beyond my bedtime routine, which begs the question: can I simply subtract that 3.5 hours off the start time? Why can’t I start at noon and have the laxative pills serve as my first “solid” food of the day at noon while my hubby goes to dine with his mother for their weekly lunch date? Or, perhaps I go with, watch them eat broccoli soup (yes, she’s STILL on a broccoli soup kick) and chex mix (her not him, god forbid mike put any processed food into his body, not even last night when I was eating my second bowl of pasta in as many days, a carbonara sans bacon (which was on the no eat list) with red sauce (don’t worry it was pureed so no seeds) and lots of parmesan, as well as sourdough toast (sorry Cherry Street Bread, I didn’t plan well enough to procure one of your delicious loaves) with plenty of butter. Mike ate some healthy open face sandwich. I’m guess the likes of which contained both onions AND jalapenos and whatever other stinky fermented foods from the fridge as when I got downstairs this morning the entire living room reeked of that spicy/fermented B.O. Yes, he slept on the couch because he watched a late baseball game and I went to bed at 7:30 am only to be kept awake by Harvest Fest’s terrible cover band, Jesus H Christ, who is signing off on all of these fracking tourist events in town. I recall when we first moved to town seeing a bumper sticker that said “Welcome to Stillwater; now get the F!@# out.” I’m really starting to understand that sentiment and wondering if I should procure one of those bumper stickers for myself.
Captain’s Log: 6:09 am Sunday. I brought leftover bakes to the gym this morning. One old man was a jerk when I interrupted him on the treadmill to let him know I brought a box of goodies for sharing. Irony = this is the same man who pesters me daily for free handouts as he’s too cheap to buy goodies from me. He later half apologized and said “I got a lot going on” to which I responded “yeah, we all do” to which he responded, do you have youtube? Um, I think everyone has youtube. He encouraged me to watch what I can only believe is a conspiracy theory Fox news bullshit video about the downfall of Minneapolis. I asked him if he’s even been to Minneapolis in the last 25 years. Of course he has not.
Having NOT learned my lesson I approached another older gent whose name I don’t know but of course I’ve been told a dozen times. I offered him goodies and he said, and I quote, “sure, I will grab one for my dog on my way out”. I thought I misheard him, but I had not. I said you feed your dog sweets? He said “that dog will eat anything”. Wow. So, my bakes are on the level of dog treats in his mind? Note to self, your license allows you to make pet treats. Why are you not doing this? Could be a real money maker; god, I’m hungry already.
Captain’s Log, 10:43 Sunday: OMG I am so flipping hungry and I cannot eat again until post procedure tomorrow afternoon. OMG OMG. I don’t think I’m gonna make it. I have 17 minutes left to drink coffee, scratch that, 16. Ok, I can do this. Pill popping starts at 11 am. God these are CUTE pink little pills. How can something so cute and tiny and perky and pink be linked to such internal destruction? Like why are these pills not the size of my burpless fish oil pills? Those you really have to work for. These are so….delicate?
Captain’s Log, 11 am Sunday: shiny pink pills ingested. Approximately 2.5 minutes later, hubby asks, deadpan, “so you wanna go on a power walk with me now?” You have GOT to be kidding. But, I am not a quitter, so no amount of shiny pink pills is gonna keep me from getting my walk on. I have to confess, I was nervous AF starting off. I think we made really good time with less than 15 minute miles. About 4 blocks from home, I felt my stomach gurgle slightly…could be from too much coffee on an empty stomach (for those of you at home screaming, “clear liquids only!”, I’ve already consulted the resource material; coffee counts as a clear liquid, but to be safe I cut it off prior to popping pink pills.)
Captain’s Log, 12 noon Sunday: Back from walk, no shits had, nervous to mix my cocktail….or cocktails. There will be 8 of them. I filmed this process so I could show my grandkids someday or randomly make one of my friend’s days. I pulled out the fancy red and green holiday stemware my mother got me after I continued to serve her red wine out of a ceramic tumbler when she visited me. Thanks mom, thinking of you! I had a lil’ sip of the Gatorade. I went with cucumber lime. It was actually really tasty…like the base of a spicey margarita, sans the spice, and of course the tequila. Maybe I can trick my body into thinking I’m taking 8 ounce shots every 10 minutes and my brain can then mimic a cocktail buzz. Either way, this ends the same way, with me on the toilet.
Captain’s Log, 12:11 pm Sunday: Stomach cramping. Course that could be because I haven’t eaten since 6 pm yesterday. Which reminds me: oh shit, the alarm is going off, time for the next cocktail. This one didn’t quite hit the same as the last one. The hubby just got back from the second half of the walk. He’s in the bathroom now. The same bathroom I prepped by cleaning and replacing the towel and by treating myself to a new flavor of soap. He came out and I barked, “stay the hell outta there; that’s my bathroom from here on out.”
Captain’s Log, 12:17 pm Sunday. He just said, “you have to be like Dumbledore [in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince when Harry was trying to retrieve the Horcrux] in the cave, drinking out of the shell; no matter what, you HAVE to keep drinking.” I didn’t need that visual.
Captain’s Log, an hour+ into the consumption….nope, not the kind in the olden days that would kill a village of plebians. The kind that wreaks havoc on your bowels. So, an hour in, seven, 8-ounce glasses later, and only a couple of stomach cramps to speak of. I’m nervous. Like really, really nervous. My head hurts…my heart is racing. I’ve never consumed that much Gatorade in my life. Hell, I haven’t cumulatively consumed that much Gatorade in my life.
Captain’s Log, 2 pm Sunday: it has now been 3 hours since I swallowed the handful of shiny pink pills. It has been 2 hours since I started my liquid lunch. Only a single dry fart to speak of. I’m worried for what is to come. I’m busying myself with admin duties, cleaning up my desktop, finding photos in the archive for this week’s bakes, petting the dogs in between tasks. I’m about to start my 15-minute increment to do list/schedule for the rest of the week, which usually requires complete concentration. Therefor I am guessing I’ll have to go to the bathroom in about 3 minutes.
Captain’s log, 3:30 pm Sunday: I’ve stepped away from the computer for approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes but I made notes in my phone when I was indisposed. Holy hell, the colon gods are not on my side. In the midst of another anal assault, I recalled years ago, like over 10, because I still lived in river falls, I struggled for over a year with gallstones. But I hated doctors and thought I could either A. tough it out and they’d eventually go away or B. I’d do a home cleanse and avoid surgery. I bought a pamphlet, or an e-book, for $34 and read it cover to cover. The pre cleanse prep involved some sort of amino acid pills, white rice and very little fat for a day (along with another 5 steps I’m sure but it’s been over 10 years AND I’ve lost about 90% of the liquid and nutrients in my body at this point so the fact that I’m sitting here on the terlet (David Sedaris’s pronunciation of toilet in one of his fabulous essays) writing this down is nothing short of a Christmas miracle. The final cleanse involved mixing up a witch’s brew of sorts, no, not with eye of newt and toenail of dragon, but basically a homemade version of Paul Newman’s balsamic salad dressing. Now at the time I didn’t think twice about this internet cleanse and this one size fits all approach. I mixed up my concoction, poured it into a favorite ceramic mug and chugged it like it was all that stood between me and a million dollars. I then laid in bed and waited for the magic to happen. I hadn’t eaten in well over a day at that point so I busied myself with looking at menus online of restaurants we might frequent the following afternoon, post purge. What happened next was a violent and unexpected reaction to what amounted to a half bottle of the aforementioned Newman’s salad dressing: I threw up all over myself and the floor and because I was throwing up olive oil, my hands kept slipping as I crouched on the floor on all fours.
Fast forward to the next day and I assumed the worst had passed. We attended a pottery sale at a posh artist loft where my friend lived. In the middle of my browsing, my bowels groaned, not dissimilar to how they’ve been groaning every 7 minutes since 2:45 pm. I barely made it to the restroom and proceeded to fill the toilet with what was left inside me, including a few tiny gallstones. While that alone should have traumatized me, it was what happened next that really iced the cake: the toilet would not flush. It was broken and no amount of jimmying the handle or reaching inside the tank was going to change that. I rushed out of the bathroom and quickly and discretely left with my hubby, never to step foot inside The Lyric artist coop again.
My point in sharing is that I clearly have PTSD from the gallbladder cleanse as all of those feelings—overconfidence in a process designed by a man that is in no way tailored to my specific female body (not in terms of weight, muscle mass, diet or the politics of my bowels); vulnerability in front of my hubby (first he watches me throw up all over myself and now he has to pretend he doesn’t really hear what is going on in the privy); fear (only the good lord knows what is going to happen to me south of the border); and the list goes on—have found their way back into into my brain. This colonoscopy prep has brought me to my knees…emotionally and physically.
Excerpt from the notes on my phone that I relayed via voice notes during the poltergeist that was my prep process:
I was in the bathroom and then did a little cleanup and then went right back to the bathroom and it’s 25 minutes later and I’ve just left the bathroom and sat on the couch. I’ve never run a marathon, but I think that was the bowel equivalent of doing such. I want to cry. But I’m laughing instead. How long will this last?
Captain’s Log, sometime after 7 pm on Sunday: T’was not the energy or the mental acuity available to me these past few hours to continue my diary. I have always been an “advanced” learner, one that excels with little tutelage, one that does a task once, then figures out how to do it better and cut the requisite time in half. If I have a ridiculously busy weekend (like record number of Friday bakes, several cakes, a few special orders and a pop up sale at the coffee shop, I never think afterwards, “damn girl, make yourself a promise to never do THAT again” but instead, “so what if I get up an hour earlier and do 3 hours more prep on a Thursday? That should allow me to take on one more special order in a crazy weekend so I can outdo myself once more.” That’s the good, better, best mentality in me that keeps coming through. As such I assumed that if the average person spent 4 hours on the shitter during colonoscopy prep, I would spend less than 2. I’m small, I’m healthy, I have regular movements. But NO. The universe said NO this time. It reminded me that I am not above average in this area, I have ZERO experience in this particular department. My ego was punished for ever thinking this would be easy. It was not. It was more difficult than 2 childbirths; certainly more humbling than those experiences; far and away the messiest hours of my life (and I used to make clay art and garden and do home remodel so that says a lot.) This was in no way what I signed up for. When will this end?
Captain’s Log, 8 am the next morning. It is time to slam the magnesium drink. It’s an entire bottle. Matt at the gym said it was a refreshing beverage to him so I tried to lean into it. It has an interesting viscosity. Not quite water, but not thick either. How would we describe that in my 11th grade physics class? Did I mention I got a C in Physics? My dad made me get a tutor…or threatened to get me a tutor. I shut that experience out long ago and great, now I’ll need to bring it up in therapy next week. I won’t write about what happened a mere 30 minutes later. You all know what happened. This is not a choose your own adventure book.
I had to stop drinking liquids at 9 so I chose more coffee than water, a decision that would come back to haunt me later; ie-I turned into a raging dehydrated bitch, which was resolved almost immediately upon my arrival at the hospital, when the poor nurse had to interface with me. “Oh honey I think you are dehydrated; let’s hook you up to an i.v. for some fluids.” This clearly was not her first dog and pony show. Thank you, Laurie for being so kind and patient with my bitch ass.
I won’t write about the actual experience, other than to share that mere minutes before I was to be drugged I had to visit the bathroom one last time, with the help of a nurse because I was already hooked up to machines and the i.v., etc. I’m sure my bare ass hung out of the hospital gown on my way to and fro but I no longer cared about such trivial matters, as I had been officially broken. The last detail I recall was the last two songs that played over the speakers in the procedure room prior to my drug induced state (and I swear this is true): Sexual Healing and Under Pressure. The procedure was a piece of cake, primarily due to the cocktail of Midazolam 2 mg, Fentanyl 100 micrograms, and Diphenhydramine 50 mg. I would have preferred to leave the hospital in a sober state and not spend the next 4 hours drooling on the couch in a half nap, half delirium, but so it was. I did manage to drag my ass into the kitchen at 6 pm to fix the hubby and me a delicious meal of spicy chicken lettuce wraps. When he heard me moving upstairs, he sprinted up from his basement workout to lecture me on how I should be laying down for the night. He saw that look in my eyes, the one that said “enough is enough; I’m back to my old self again; let’s eat!” and knew it was in his best interest to stop lecturing.
In the end, after all of the mishaps, vulnerable hours, lack of sleep, and violent and repeat assaults on my body, all I got for it was a lousy “The entire colon is normal; no specimens collected. Come back in 10 years.”
The End.
