The Plan, The Prep, The Procedure
What happens when you mix 238 g of Polyethylene Glycol 3350 in 64 oz of water and drink 8 oz of the mixture, every 30 minutes, over 3.5 hours?
I am glad you asked.
9:00 AM:
You eat exatly two pieces of toast. You have been saving these pieces of toast since last evening like you have been saving them for apocalypse. You savor these two pieces like this is your last meal. Bit by bit, crumb by crumb, the speed at which you eat them will make a sloth proud. Because let’s face it. You know once the clock strikes 5 PM, everything will turn to liquid form. But you don’t care.
All is right in the world at this moment. You want to hold on to this memory.
You are about to enter a very dark period in your life.
2:00 PM:
You pop four 5 mg of Bisacodyl tablets (Dulcolax) like you pop skittles in a hurry before running off to the next meeting. But before the effect of these tablets kicks in, you mix two packets of (119 g each) of Polyethylene Glycol 3350 powder (MiraLAX) in a 64 oz pitcher and set it aside.
5:00 PM:
You serve 8 oz of that clear liquid from that pitcher into your glass nonchalantly, like you are sitting at a dingy bar and the bartender has passed out behind the counter. You shotgun that 8 oz like it’s a glass of lukewarm Michelob Ultra because you don’t want to be a coward in front of your family.
[Note to self: Should have mixed the powder with Gatorade or something and not water. Oh well. That’s for next time.]
With water, this mixture is supposed to be tasteless, but it’s becoming quite clear right now that whoever led the R&D team that day had never actually tasted anything tasteless in their life. You are already regretting this decision. With 8 oz in, you now have more to lose if you choose to withdraw and have to repeat the whole damn thing. Might as well march forward and confront the mighty adversary — come what may.
5:05 PM:
You fondly reminisce the last solid food you ate in the morning. That dry toast sure feels so tasty right about now. You open the refrigerator and decide which clear liquid you could drink. You have already guzzled 12 oz of 7 UP since 9 AM and you are not enjoying it anymore. You settle for Green Tea with the hope that Zen would embrace you sooner or later and you could master the art of faking it. To remain calm, that is.
5:40 PM:
Second or Third sign of life. The pressure is growing. You thought you had already cleared it all after popping those Bisacodyl tablets earlier. How wrong you were!! It is at this moment you realize you have basically been drinking the “Safe for Human Consumption” version of Drano. For the next few hours, you start to wish the commode had a seat belt, as you pretty much are going to be confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. Or you think you do. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you are reminded that it’s been 30 minutes since the last 8 oz and you have to drink another 8 oz of MiraLAX, at which point, as far as you can tell, your stomach wants to divorce you with alimony in perpetuity.
8:30 PM:
Time for the last 8 oz. Your family has started ignoring you. And you no longer have to pretend that you are drinking at a dingy bar. Green Tea has completely failed to bring out the Zen in you.
Sweet Mary, Mother of God!!
Is this real life? Suddenly, everything’s a blur. That little chemistry experiment you have been forced to cook inside your body has reached its boiling point. Your stomach is really angry now. It hates you. You can feel it. It knows it’s too late for divorce settlements or any negotiations. It thinks you both have to live angrily together ever after. The pitch of the stomach growling reaches the moon. Or at least it reaches the spy balloon spotted over Lake Michigan. You really do not care if anyone in the house or the neighborhood could hear that booming liquid thunder.
You have pushed out everything you have ever eaten since the day you were born, everything your ancestors have ever eaten since the early 1800s, and have even traveled to the future to start eliminating food you have not eaten yet. Right about now, you may feel like you want to curl up in the bathroom floor ugly crying, with dollops of sweat making puddles around you. It is quite normal to feel so.
Because it is exactly at this moment you meet Jesus.
Salvation time.
After an action-packed evening, you hope that meeting with Jesus would set you on the path to salvation. That thought brings some peace inside you. Or maybe you are too dehydrated by then. You finally get to sleep. If you are like me, who did not know the hardships of this path, you would not have chosen an early afternoon appointment. Instead, you would have chosen the first available appointment in the morning.
The Next Day:
Your designated driver drives you to the facility. You may be a bit nervous. After all, what if you experienced occasional return bouts of that ‘MiraLAX spurtage’.
Thoughts such as “Could this happen during the actual procedure?” and “What if it does? How do you apologize to the doctor or whoever is by you for something like that? Surely, flowers would not be enough..” stroll through your mind.
You fill a bunch of forms and wait. More unnerving thoughts keep tripping you. But you fight them by trying to drown in the gloomy news from around the world. Eventually you are asked to come in and you change into the embarrassing hospital gown. A nurse checks your vitals and puts an oxygen mask over your face. There is no going back now.
The anesthesiologist comes around to introduce himself. He tries to lighten your mood by making small conversations. He asks about your profession. Then goes onto joke, “We are not as smart as you” — you, the computer guy, the IT whiz, who is straddled on a hospital bed, and is currently at the mercy and intelligence of this anesthesiologist to give you the right dosage of propofol (Diprivan) before he hooks up the intravenous tube. It makes you slightly nervous.
When everything is ready, the nurse wheels you into the procedure room, where the doctor is waiting with another nurse, an anesthesiologist, and someone else, who you presume to be a technician because he seems as nervous as you are. You do not want to see the 1000 foot-tube, aka scope, that is about to start its probing journey. Thankfully, they make make you roll over to your left side, away from the sight of the scope, and the anesthesiologist, yes, the same one, begins hooking something up to the needle in your hand. You wish there was some music playing in the room, and then you suddenly hear music. You are really not sure at this point if the music is playing in the procedure room or if it is all in your head. You are not even sure if the song that you are hearing is “Highway to Hell” or “Stairway to Heaven”.
Then you hear a voice.
“Are you ready?”
And then it is time, the moment you have been dreading for more than 5 years.
If you are squeamish, or do not like to read soiled or unsavory details, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it is like.
I have no idea. Really. I do not have any idea.
You sleep through it. Yes, you sleep through the entire procedure. One moment, you hear the guitar riffs and “Are you ready?” in the doctor’s voice overlapped with Brian Johnson (AC/DC) screaming the same, and the next moment, you are back in the other room, the recovery room as they call it, waking up in a very mellow mood. The nurse checks in on you and gives you a box of juice. Or two if you are so into that juice.
The gastroenterologist walks in and asks you how you feel. Honestly, you feel very relaxed because you are still reeling from the effects of propofol. I did. I felt completely relaxed. I even joked and asked the doctor if I could have the anesthesiologist come in and give me another dose of propofol.
I told the doctor I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when she told me that it was all over, and that despite my clear liquid diet for more than 42 hours, my colon had passed with flying colors.
I have never been prouder of passing a test.
And I had never been hungrier for a banana waiting for me in the car.
—
Are you over 45? Have you scheduled your colonoscopy yet? If not, please do so as soon as you can.
- Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer diagnosed in the United States.
- Colonoscopies reduce deaths from colorectal cancer by 60 to 70 percent (Source: National Cancer Institute).
- 45 is the new 50. The Preventive Services Task Force (yes, there is such a thing) has lowered the recommended age from 50 to 45 for CRC screening.
- Most health insurance providers (in the USA) should cover basic CRC screening at no out-of-pocket cost to you. (But do check with your insurance provider for any riders.)
[This post has been published in public humor..err..interest.]
