THE DREADED COLONOSCOPY

                                                

I call this “The Dreaded Colonoscopy II,” because I wrote a column a few years back on this same subject. A few months back my Doctor here in Crosslake, who shall remain nameless although we all love her, informed me that it was time for this procedure again. You know something distasteful is coming up when they almost apologize as they tell you about it. It’s as if you drew the short straw as to who was going to clean up the road-killed skunk out by the mailbox. It was April at the time she told me, so what the heck I thought, I’ll worry about that when the time comes in October. Well news flash, the time came.

This procedure has as its nemesis some thing called prep. I am not sure if anyone has succumbed to this prep procedure but I’m betting there have been some who really didn’t care if they did or didn’t. The combination of drugs and liquid mixes that make up this prep remind me of an old Eagles song called “Take it to the limit.” Not sure if I was just more sensitive then others to this brew but my bedroom is literally ten feet from the commode and when the urge hits, you have about a second less then it takes this old man to run that ten feet. I’ll spare you the details on that. The last time my derriere was this sore is when my father gave me a friendly spanking with a piece of wooden lathe with a nail in it. In his defense he didn’t know the nail was in it until I pointed it out to him, so to be nice about it, he turned the board around. But I’m getting off the subject here.

At the hospital, after they give you one of those peek a boo gowns that ties in the back and also unties in the back after you take two steps, they wheel you into the examination room. The good Doctor came in and introduced himself. He asked if this was my first colonoscopy and I told him no, it was the third and you did them all. I was thinking to myself right then and there. If he sits down on that little stool and says, “Oh now I recognize you,” I was coming right off of that gurney. After the procedure he told me everything looked very nice. Now I’ve never looked in there but if I was a Doctor and I had looked in there, I might have said “Everything looks in order.” Very nice Doc. is the sun going down over Crosslake on a summer evening.

Now comes the mea culpa. As much as I poke light of things like this, I thank the lord that there are good doctors and nurses available who look after our health and that when those nurses will wrap you up in a warm blanket, that makes you want to suck your thumb and hear your old Irish Grandma singing Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra, just when everything looks so bleak. They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, even if its 64 ounces of prevention that you get two hours to drink and-- damn it Mike, get serious.

If you’re over sixty or have a family history of colon problems you need to do this. This disease can be managed with early prevention and did I tell you? —After the exam they feed you. Also if you play scrabble and you want to use the word colonoscopy in a sentence, you better have a lot of o’s.