Well, it’s official; I’m as healthy as I can be in the aftermath of my health emergency last year. As John posted in his blog, I had an emergency colostomy in late March 2010 because my colon sprang a leak and I was developing an ugly, life-threatening infection in my guts. After the infection was killed and my guts had a chance to heal thoroughly, the colostomy was reversed in June. There was a lingering chance, albeit small, that I might have an undetected colon cancer despite a barium enema back between the surgeries and biopsies during them. It’s unusual for someone my age to suddenly develop a hole in their colon, though, without some precipitating factor like a malignancy. Doctors like to actually look at the insides of the colon to determine if there is a problem. Dr. Holly couldn't look at mine until I was completely healed. So, I had a colonoscopy today and my colon looks fine. Whew!
They recommend everyone have a colonoscopy at age fifty and every five years thereafter. These are the same people who want women to place their breasts in a plexiglass clamp every year. Who invents these things, De Sade Biomedical Devices?
The actual scan wasn’t horrid; it’s the prep. I’d done the prep twice before, once for the barium enema and once for the reconnection surgery, so it was only extremely unpleasant. There are some tricks to make it bearable. I had a prescription for “Go-Lytely.” a bad joke. You go, but it sure isn't lightly. The stuff comes as a powder in a gallon jug. You add water and shake. I added sugar-free lemon-aide mix to flavor it. No red or purple foods are allowed before the test (their remnants look like blood and tend to make the doctor think the worst) or I would have used fruit punch mix instead. I mixed the jug early in the day and refrigerated it. I also poured it over ice cubes, then drank it with a straw. This way, the liquid was very cold and didn’t linger in the front of my mouth, bypassing a lot of tastebuds and chilling the rest. You are supposed to drink a full glass every ten to fifteen minutes, starting about 6:00 PM. I started closer to eight. The stuff wasn’t bad but the aftertaste was.... not good. I took a slug of white grape juice after each glassful and that made it OK.
After an hour of drinking and worrying about when the runs would start, I moved all of my stuff into the bathroom. I had a big container of ice cubes, the jug of Go-Lytely, a bottle of white grape juice, two drinking glasses with ice and straws, a book, and my cell phone. I also got out two fresh rolls of TP. Once I started going, I didn’t want anything necessary out of easy arm’s reach.
The idea is to wash out the colon for the scope by drinking enough of the stuff so you start to run clear. After the second hour, what was coming out looked pretty much like what was going in, so I stopped drinking the Go-Lytely; I had to take about half of the jug to accomplish this. Everyone is different, though. Some people have to drink the whole four liters. I was in the bathroom for about ninety minutes, non-stop. I didn’t sit the whole time (that would have hurt my tush!), but I didn’t want to leave the immediate vicinity of the toilet. Finally, I was able to move to the kitchen as the interval between spasms increased to fifteen minutes and longer after I stopped taking in more Go-Lytely. Finally, I stopped going, took a shower, and went to bed about 1:30 AM.
The alarm went off at 5:30 AM. I tried to ignore it until almost 6:00. I was already half-dressed; after my shower, I put on my clean underwear, socks, and undershirt, along with my sleeping fleece and sweats (it’s COLD in my room in the winter with no heat in the unfinished upstairs, but I sleep really well!). I just had to pull off the sweats and put on my trousers, sweater, and shoes. This took a few minutes so I had enough time to drink a Diet Coke to wake me up and go out to warm up the car with plenty of time in order to leave before 6:45, which was also the time when I had to stop drinking clear liquids (Diet Coke is considered a clear liquid as it doesn't have any milk in it) before the procedure. Cooley Dickinson Hospital is half an hour away and I was due there at 7:15. I arrived on time.
I checked in and they immediately called me out of the waiting room. I was led to a dressing room, stripped, put on a johnny and robe, nifty gripper socks, and sat down to wait. The nurses in the endoscopy suite are jolly; since no one wants to be there, I guess they feel like they have to try to keep our spirits up. One wanted to insert an IV port in my hand but she couldn’t find a good vein. I think all of those veins got blown out while I was in the hospital for the surgeries. She found one inside my elbow and was pretty painless. Dr. Holly was early so I went into the colonoscopy suite at 8:00 AM, fifteen minutes early. The last things they took were my underpants and glasses. You know it's for real when they take your underpants and glasses. I was disappointed that I couldn’t watch the procedure; the monitor was too far away for me to see with no glasses.
Dr. Holly looked at my belly before she got out the scope. She was pleased to see how it had healed. The actual scope didn’t hurt. She was pretty fast, too, although I might be wrong; the drugs may have compacted time. Dr. Holly took one biopsy sample; there was a bit of inflammation at the spot where she connected the sections of my colon. She wasn’t concerned but she always biopsies anything that isn’t perfectly normal. I had a weird spot on my foot biopsied by my regular doctor several years ago; it turned out to just be a patch of inflammation that cleared up with steroid cream. We won’t be using any cream inside my guts, but this one is probably nothing, too.
My colon is basically healthy. Now, I just have to exercise my abdominal muscles so I get back the full ability to pick up my feet. I’m much better; I had to use a walker after the first surgery because Dr. Holly gutted me like I was a fish, to wash as much infection out as possible before she stapled me shut.
Jack picked me up after the colonoscopy was finished and I had spent about an hour in recovery. Actually, he came to take me out to breakfast, then returned me to the hospital so I could drive myself home. I had been walking around under my own steam for half an hour before he arrived and, by the time we ate, it had been well over two hours since the procedure. I think Dr. Holly didn’t use a lot of happy juice on me; I didn’t need it. I think they look at how people are acting and adjust the dosage accordingly. I wanted to watch so I wasn’t all freaked out, like some people.
Katie Couric is right; colonoscopy isn’t fun but it’s no big deal. It might save your life. If I had had one before I got sick, maybe I would have known that I had those weak spots and would have adjusted my diet, earlier. Or maybe nothing would have prevented my emergency. I’m just glad to know I’m all right now.
Go Jesse!
To follow up on my previous entry about TSA body-searches, I read that Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota and professional wrestler, is suing the TSA and Janet Napolitano for sexual battery. Ventura has an artificial hip joint, the original having been replaced by titanium, which can set off the metal detectors at airports. I find it somewhat amusing that a man who used to make his living dressed in nothing but a bright spandex brief and boots, who grabbed other men dressed in equally lurid spandex outfits for prize money, is suing for being groped. But, he’s retired from that now and he doesn’t want his genitals to be handled by strangers any longer, or at least, not when he’s not being paid for it. Good for him! I wish him the best. Maybe he’ll get all of us some satisfaction from the courts because he can afford to hire a good lawyer for the length of time it will take for the case to wend its way through the system, unlike the rest of us.
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