My First Colonoscopy: What You Should Know
by BRONSON PAGE
If anyone in your family has had colon cancer, take the age they were when they were diagnosed, subtract 10 years, and that’s the age at which you should have a colonoscopy. Mom was 50, and so being 40, I had my first colonoscopy this year, besides, all of my coolest friends (Paul, Jeb, Sonny) were having them, and I’m not one to be left out. Here’s how it went for me. If I can get through it, then anyone can:
Thursday:
Breakfast is the last meal I’ll have for over 24 hours. At 9AM, I had mixed fruit with yogurt, cottage cheese, and granola, and since I knew it would be a while until my next meal, I felt a rice krispy treat was also in order. An hour or so later, the hunger kicks in, and it has to be quelled with clear liquids only, and juices without pulp until Thursday night. I definitely felt the absence of solid food, and learned that when I get a specific gurgle on my left side, under my ribcage, it’s time for a game of iPhone Scrabble in the “throne room.” When I got home, Sam was having our favorite Chinese chicken salad, and I would have killed for even a taste of the Styrofoam container it was in. But I had bigger plans. I was to take my first dose of MoviPrep, a pre-exam solution that gets its name either because everything moves, or because it’s good prep if you’re going to be in a porn movie. Maybe both. Either way, it tastes like lemon-lime crystal lite made with sea water. Icy cold, or even on the rocks is better than room temperature because you’re going to be drinking a quarter-liter every fifteen minutes for an hour. It starts to work in about 20 minutes. If you live with others, for their sake, please crank up the tunes. At few points in one’s life are the ramifications of one’s dietary choices more apparent or the reasons for making resolutions more clear. We’ll leave it at that. Provided you started a couple of hours before bed, you can feel pretty secure about bedding down for the night. The effect of the MoviPrep is pretty comprehensive, and at the end of the first treatment, you can set your watch by the twenty minutes it takes to say hello and wave goodbye to a warm cup of beef broth, and you realize how stopped up you have been. Your digestive tract has NEVER been this clean. Until tomorrow, when it will be even cleaner.
Friday
My appointment is at 1pm, so I must begin the second dose of MoviPrep at 6:30am – another liter of solution – and no more liquids of any kind thereafter – not even water. This day’s Prep is different, because most of the work is done. The apartment is completely empty and this dose is like that final sweep and dust before you leave the apartment, hoping for your full deposit back. If you’ve done all of this correctly, expect every penny, because internally, you’re as good as new. It’s 9 now, and three hours before we go to the doctor’s office, so I figured going for a haircut would be a good way to keep myself busy and not thinking of food. And it was.
No matter what, at this point, don’t be fooled by that “familiar feeling.” It’s not gas. By 11am I am not only freshly shorn, but free of any gastrointestinal urges and I glimpse what life would be like if we didn’t eat or drink, or use the bathroom. It’s bliss. McDonalds holds no allure. Food and drink are not concerns.
Sam takes me to the doctor’s office in Beverly Hills complete with the comings and goings of heavy ethnic women getting the “lap band.” Frankly, I’m more worried about the IV than anything. Sam gives me a 5mg Valium, which gets right to work on my empty body. Suddenly, I don’t have a care in the world. Here’s the picture to prove it.
- Versed
They give me a hospital gown and cap and call me in for the IV, and put it in just below my right bicep. It takes all I have not to look over at it, but I’m certain that if I were to, I’d pass out, so I stare at the clock on the wall. Then they jack me into a little Versed
(verr-SED), and almost immediately, everything looks like a 3D movie; a 3D movie starring me without a care in the world. They wheel me into the room with the pretty screens and beeping things, and put a clear mask over my face. Someone asks if I’d seen the pictures of Rihanna. I reply that I hadn’t.
Moments later I’m in the place I was where they first gave me the IV, staring at the clock on the wall, and noticing that it’s not moments later. It’s a half an hour later, they’re done, and I can think of nothing but food. My gastroenterologist tells me that everything is just fine, no polyps, no need for the biopsies I was worried about, and no more colonoscopies for another five years.
(If you’re morbidly curious about what happened during my amnesic period, here is a video of the procedure – not my procedure.)
