How to get a colonoscopy

You won't believe the kind of cameras technology has given us

A Peach, Seville, George Henry Hall, 1866

Let’s define our terms.

Colonoscopy - a procedure a doctor uses to look at the inside of the colon and rectum with a colonoscope, which is a long, flexible tube about the width of a finger with a light and small video camera on the end. It’s put in through the anus and into the rectum and colon.¹

I think you get the, ahem, picture from the vivid vocabulary words in that description.

Step #1 - Your PCP has called it IBS, though you haven’t found triggers. You just have days where your stomach throws a tantrum. Ignore your wife’s urgings to see a GI doctor. You’re fine. Sure, you have a family history of colorectal cancer, but you’re 32. The last thing you want to do is get a colonoscopy.

Step #2 - A cup of K Brew Marble City blend ruins an afternoon and you decide to quit fighting. You have an HSA. A check-up couldn’t hurt.

Step #3 - Miss the doctor’s phone call when he says he’s out sick. Show up to the appointment with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Read three pages about Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback, then get sent home because “We tried to call you, we will reschedule.”

Step #4 - See the doctor. Because hospitals make you anxious and chatty, you ask where he’s from (Florida, he grew up surfing). He suggests a colonoscopy. You knew it would come to this. The procedure is Darth Vader, and you are Luke Skywalker: you must face him.

Step #5 - Take the prescribed preparation medicine. They have names like “Clean” and “Lax” and “GoLytely.” They all have one mission that they state on the box: “Evacuate the bowels.” And they are good at that mission. You’ve been given CleanPiq, which was crafted by someone named Screwtape, for whom they can’t trace a laboratory address. 20 minutes After the first bottle of cranberry flavored liquid, you’re doing what you’ll be doing the rest of the night, evacuating. Eventually, you have the (empty) guts and try to sleep.

Step #6 - Wake up early. Your wife drives you to the hospital. You check-in, and fall asleep in the lobby after reading three pages of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (How did Sirius Black get into Hogwarts again?!?)

Step #7 - Go to the back room, change into the gown with your rear-end hanging out of the flaps. Try to ignore the fact that all the nurses know why you’re here and what’s about to happen.

Step #8 - Get wheeled into a bright, sterile, fluorescent room. Have a jolt of fear about dying in a place just like this. Meet the doctor who says something about “Loose stools,” Wonder why he is dressed like he’s about to go play a round of golf. Look to the right, see a black tube that looks like a rat snake. Ask “Is that the butt camera?” It is. Give in, this is how you die.

Step #9 - In peak discomfort, ask the anesthesiologist where she’s from (Fort Worth but the Texas heat and the allure of the mountains brought her and her husband to Tennessee). She keeps talking about her kids or something while she presses the button on the syringe and you don’t hear the rest. Fade out.

Step #10 - Wake up to the nurse smacking you telling you they didn’t find anything and you need to go home.

Step #11 - See your PCP about a follow up for the results, and bring Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. That Harry is so angsty in this one!

1. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/diagnosis-staging/tests/endoscopy/colonoscopy.html