Lay Back and Take It.  They Don't Even Buy You Dinner First.

 As oftentimes opined on this blog of late, turning 50 permanently stains your medical records in the eyes of those tasked with looking after your health.  Their eyes bug out of their head when they see that you're 50.  They take nothing for granted, which is tough on the ego, and ego's get us into worlds of hurt.  In this instance, listening to your ego could kill you.

One of the obligatory moves happens to be undergoing a colonoscopy.  Yeah, you turn fifty and you get to be sodomized by 4 feet of fiber optic cable.  But they are kind to you.  They slip you a rufi first, so if you can get over being pantsless for a couple hours in advance of the big dance, you should be able to get through it just fine.  I mean, Ted Kennedy was able to pull off the look in Palm Beach lo those many years ago, so why can't you on a medical gurney?

 The recommendation apparently comes with good reason.  In mine they found a diverticular spot and removed a couple of polyps.  This stuff runs in families and can be impacted by booze, butts, and obesity, a trifecta of vices I have eschewed only recently in my ill spent life.  My mother had to have a colonostomy based on a perferated diverticular, and I got to catch that recuperation after my brother and sister had each signed up for one of her two hip replacement recoveries.  Would that I had  signed up sooner for elder care.  I really, really could have avoided having to do pooper scooper duty on my own mother.

 The hereditary nature of the disease compelled the doctor's office to tell me to inform my siblings, which I have done.  In so doing I learned that my sister, some 10 years older than I, has never had a colonoscopy.     She was dutifully scolded, particularly considering she had a very dear friend die of colon cancer about 20 years ago based on it never being diagnosed until it was too late.  That woman just felt as though she had a long lasting flu and blew off going to the doctors.

But people really have an issue with the idea of having some gowned and masked roto-rooter guy take an auger to their ass.  I get that.  Believe me.  I had a pre-screen meeting with my feisty, humorous little Asian doctor and informed him I had had the procedure 20 years prior.  He was aghast until such time as I indicated I figured it was stress given  the consultancy in which I worked was going under while my wife was pregnant with our 3rd kid.  (Duh!) Biggest question I had for him was whether or not technology had miniaturized the width of the scope.

That question was a passive aggressive way of me asking if that which he was going to shove up my ass had gotten any smaller in the past 20 years.  All he did was look at me and go, "Sorry.  But the drugs are better."

Works for me.

So a colonoscopy sucks, but it is a necessary evil like death, taxes, children's recitals, and watching chick flicks with that important person in your life after you have done something incredibly insensitive and cruel.

And it really is not that bad.  Yes, the liquids used to, uh, clean you out, can be pretty stressful.  But I learned something useful for this second time. The first time I had eaten right at the cut off point.  This being my Gordon Gekko era, I was in my pin striped suited glory at the office getting in half a day.  I decided to drink the stuff, then hop in the car to get home, and then start editing some research reports while gaily shitting my brains out on the home can.

 It did not work that way.  I literally had to sprint to the office can at the opposite end of the building where I remained for several hours before sheepishly heading home around 7:30 at night.

 Not good.

 This time I stopped solid foods the night before the morning I was to start the fast.  It is far better, boys and girls, to evacuate your body on your terms rather than on Magnesium Citrate's terms.  It was much much easier.

No one looks forward to this, but no one looks forward to colon cancer, either.  It really has to be addressed.

Post procedure wasn't that bad.  I passed out before the whole thing started, unlike in the first one, where I watched it on videotape in perverse fascination much the way I watched my last knee surgery.  I woke up to be told of the diverticular and the polyps now off being biopsied.

I was a little woozie, sure, but it was a "these drugs are kind of fun" kind of woozie.  Only real discomfort were some periodic sharp gas like pains that hit every now and again for about 8 hours after the procedure.

So it is not fun, but I've endured far worse pain such as flu cramps.  The take away from this post, however, is as follows:

Colon cancer does not manifest itself in most cases before it is too late.  It is only through proactive, preventative maintenance that you can address it.  If you are over 50, you have no excuse not to do get the procedure done.

More to the point? Stop procrastinating.  You need to be sodomized by a 4 foot fiber optic cable.  It could save your life.