Things I Learned from my Colonoscopy

posted in: news, Uncategorized, updates | 0

I know, I know.

I disappear for, like, forever and the first thing I treat you to when I get back is a story about my colonoscopy.

You’re welcome.

Had a lot of stuff going on, most of it personal, none of it professional, all of it a huge pain in the ass.

Speaking of…

I had my first colonoscopy a couple of days ago.

You see, I hit the wonderful age of 50 this past August. Being 50 means that every day is filled with strange muscle pains, thinning hair, insomnia and a permanently flaccid penis. It is truly magical.

50 also brings about the doctor’s recommendation for a colonoscopy.

Now, I like things put in my bum just as much as the next guy. However I’m usually pretty drunk when it happens and the only evidence afterwards is my wife saying to me the next morning, “I can’t believe you let me do that to you.” It’s usually at this point I have to go check for internal bleeding. She gets carried away, sometimes.

I’ve said too much.

But my doctor scheduled my colonoscopy and I was immediately sent a giant list of preparatory instructions. This entailed a couple of days of clean eating, fluid drinking and shitting like I was trying to put out a fire with it.

So, without further ado…

THINGS I LEARNED FROM MY COLONOSCOPY


1) Diet Day Isn’t So Bad

My first day of prep (2 days before procedure) meant eating only things that had no red or blue dyes in it. Apparently this is because the dyes can stain your intestines which actually seems kind of awesome. I imagine it would be like some trippy 60s kaleidoscope for the doctors going through my tie-dyed anus. Honestly it sounds like fun.

This meant a day eating bland food which is fine because if you’ve ever had my wife’s cooking then it was just a normal day.

I did get to eat pasta but couldn’t have any sauce. This meant I needed to make myself butter noodles so of course now the kids want butter noodles and then ate all the butter noodles so I ended up not eating much. This is parenthood. You get one thing – ONE THING – and the kids take it and destroy it.

2) Green Jell-O is the AntiChrist

After the first day, you move onto the day before the procedure. This entire day consists of eating only clear liquids after 8 AM.

Clear liquids, though, includes black coffee. I don’t know if I am misunderstanding the term “clear” but pretty sure black coffee is not clear. I am also pretty sure they don’t mean black coffee from a car mechanic’s waiting area because I’m 99% sure that shit would just clog you up immediately.

It also includes Jell-O.

Now, I’m not particularly adverse to Jell-O, but I could only eat green or orange Jell-O. My wife made me a couple of containers of the green kind. Supposedly this is “lime” flavored but I’m not sure when limes began to taste like furniture polish. I drink a lot and am pretty sure I know what a lime tastes like and green Jell-O tastes like limes that have been soaked in a vat of Murphy’s Oil Soap. Terrible stuff.

Not bad if you mix it with tequila which is see-through so I assume that was allowed.

3) Call me Bloaty McBloaterson

Now we get to the fun part.

At the end of Day 2, my instructions included drinking – and this is not a typo – a 64 ounce bottle of Gatorade mixed with – and this is amazing – a 2-week supply of laxative.

This 64-ounce bottle of liquid shitmaker happens two hours after you take 4 laxative pills.

Now, I’m a guy who is 5-feet, 3-inches tall and weighs about 140 pounds. A 64-ounce bottle of Gatorade is roughly the size of my torso. The instructions give you 2 to 3 hours to drink the ENTIRE BOTTLE of this.

Color me silly, but there is absolutely no way a person of my size has the exact same prep instructions as, say, Shaquille O’Neal. I simply cannot physically fit 64-ounces of Gatorade into a 20-ounce stomach.

By the time the third hour of trying to drink this was approaching, I was pretty much just a human water balloon. People were telling me that I would be starving but I can personally tell you that I did not have room in my body for anything anyways because I was 99.9% made of sport drink and laxative at that point.

And that’s when the poo started.

4) So. Much. Poo.

Actually, this is not entirely accurate.

The first time the laxatives kick in, it is a little like being sick. Not too bad, typical squishy poots.

Then things take a horrible, horrible turn.

Every fart becomes an adventure. This is because farts are no longer farts. What feels like a fart is actually a tiny little fireman manning a fire hose and in that fire hose is about 4,000 gallons of water.

The water comes out with the force roughly equivalent to the Hoover Dam bursting. It was not uncommon for me to actually blast off the toilet a few inches and in some cases the toilet actually flushed itself out of sheer panic.

But the water is yellow.

I assumed this was just the 5 kegs of Lemon Gatorade I had ingested but it turns out that your stomach gets really really angry at you when you don’t eat food so it just starts creating digestive juices thinking maybe it’s missing something. Since it is not missing anything, these digestive juices find their way through your intestines at incredible force, destroying villages and killing animals and trees and vehicles and bridges and anything else in its path.

It’s terrifying.

This goes on for what seems like days. Mainly because you can’t even trust yourself to fall asleep because farting in your sleep would actually mean shitting yourself in bed and potentially drowning you and whoever happens to be next to you. I slept on the couch because I thought replacing couch cushions would be cheaper than replacing an entire mattress and also finding a new wife who doesn’t mind getting sprayed with shit water.

5) Yay sleepytime

My wife drove me to my procedure because they won’t let you Uber. This is because they say Uber drivers aren’t responsible. Hearing this, I sold all my stock in Uber but it turns out they mean the Uber drivers aren’t responsible FOR YOU so now I feel like I probably just ruined my retirement.

I got the johnnie on, got naked underneath and headed in for the procedure.

The last thing I remember is hearing the anesthesiologist saying, “Okay count back from 3” and I made it to “Th-” and then I woke up.

THERE WERE SNACKS.

The snacks were delicious. I think this is only because they weren’t green Jell-O or Gatorade.

My wife said I was pretty out of it when I came out of recovery but, looking back, I don’t remember or know how I dressed myself. I can only imagine the conversations I was having with myself, still drugged, trying to get my underwear back on. This is usually difficult for me because [see “I’m 50” comment from earlier].

6) See You in Ten Years

The doctor gave me the skinny on the procedure and their findings. Apparently I asked them if I could keep what they found in there so my wife was pretty happy to have her engagement ring back.

All seemed clear. I was happy.

I was happier to leave. I was even happier to go grab a large steak bomb on the way home. I was ecstatic to eat that. I was giddy when I was finally able to actually fart and only have air come out.

I will never take a fart for granted again.