The Flip Side of Forty: Scoping you out!

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Scoping you out!

Ever had a colonoscopy? You might think it a subject better suited for the Flip Side of Fifty, but here’s a story I’d like to share about an old rugby friend who, at the age of 44, started to have a few minor digestive disruptions and decided, wisely, to have them checked out. A colonoscopy discovered colon cancer in its earliest stages, and Emmy was able to get immediate treatment and come out on the other side with flying colors.

I know all too well the relative discomfort—and diagnostic benefits—of the Colonoscopy. A year or so before becoming pregnant with Dominick, my belly was beginning to rumble, again, in spastic fits of disequilibrium, and given the history of Crohn’s and colitis in my family, I wasn’t going to take any chances, so I had my first colonoscopy. I was fine (and maybe just needed to get pregnant again, and let the expansion of my uterus slow things down for awhile), but will never forget watching the photos of my pink colon float on by as I lay on the table and tried to feel dignified. The worst part of being scoped? The preparation itself: fasting for many hours while force-feeding yourself glass after glass of that disgusting Fleet phospho-soda stuff that cleans out your system in riptide fashion, and leaves you picture-ready. My friend and fellow Used Bagge Sunny (aka Tyler) wrote a wonderful tribute to the Colonoscopy in honor of Emmy’s good fortune, and I asked her if I could share it on the blog. It’s hilarious, and important, and a fine complement to The Clampdown. And it’s just another reason to always, always, hold a Used Bagge by the bottom! Here’s Sunny:

Dear Loved Ones:

Just a friendly reminder that you are due for this service when you turn 50. But why wait? -- schedule today! Be like me - even though you're not due for routine screening for another five years, step right up and let them do it early because you exhibit a few symptoms. After all, if your dear friend Emmy, also 44, was able to catch colon cancer after a single symptom because she got right on it and she's now happy and healthy, you should be similarly diligent. It's not such a bad way to spend a few hours, and I'd like you to enjoy yours even more than I did, which is why I offer some advice below.

Try to avoid the part where they put a camera up your behind. To paraphrase a friend's experience, the bad news is they put quite a lot of equipment up my pooper; the good news is I did not enjoy it.

Also try to avoid the part where you have to clean out your insides so the photos look pretty. This involves not eating for 36 hours and other routines best enjoyed by the anorexic and bulemic populations. Or people who live in Santa Monica. If you like food as much as I do, it is a day of fine dining that you will never get back and therefore a cause for much mourning in itself.

It is inevitable during the procedure that they will introduce massive amounts of gas INTO your bowel, on purpose. What we won't endure for a well-lit snapshot! While most of the population usually works diligently and discreetly to make sure things flow in the opposite direction, try to make the best of it by imagining you are a teenage boy and all the fun you will have later with your friends.

If you have the option of not being petite or having a curvaceous colon, I would definitely stick with having a larger, straighter body. This will enable you to avoid hearing the doctor say to the nurse "pull back and try again, pull back and try again" and "no, no, don't do that" several times as you feel the scope poking through your abdominal wall in its best Alien imitation. Hey kids, let's take pretty photos, don't try to perforate the bowel. It ain't comfortable and I might need to use it again for something.

Because you will already have had more fun than a barrel of monkeys, I recommend you not follow instructions to pop right up off the operating table and scurry for the bathroom when it's all over. This will likely result in immediate fainting, falling backward and banging your head on wooden doors or other inconvenient structures. Why not wait to sleep in your own comfy bed, which I have found superior to the harshly lit and rather cold bathroom floor?

If you follow my advice, I'm sure you will find that this invaluable diagnostic procedure is well worth the time and effort. When you hear the good news that you have neither malignancy nor polyps nor other discernable faults in your nether region, I'm sure you will, like me, rejoice that you can look forward to another one of these in five years or so. In the meantime, take pride that the medical staff, aka your body's guests for the day, were extremely pleased with the quality of the photos and seemed to have a really good time.

Yours in good health,

Tyler

So ladies: get your mammos done, keep up with your paps and dental visits, don't forget to have those moles checked, and by all means, don't fear the colonoscopy! But above all else, be well. Thanks, Sunny and Emmy for sharing your stories! I send LOVE to all, and especially to all the Used Baggage out there!

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The Love List--a Work in Progress

I love…

…Having time to really listen to music, not just a snippet or a song but a whole album at once. On vinyl. Or to dust off those old mixed tapes and give them a spin. Or, even better, catch a live show. Go to a festival. Dance.

…Finding new music that I love, again, just when I think there's nothing that will grab my solar plexus and send me spinning.

…Eating homemade pie. Strawberry rhubarb, wild blueberry, apple. To hell with cake. Cake sucks. Pie rocks.

…Watching, feeling, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting the change in seasons. From summer into fall, fall into winter, winter into spring, and spring into summer, there are moments that creep up on you, fill your senses with the tingling excitement and resignation that change is in the air, and compel you to shift ever so slightly in your consciousness to adjust to the coming winds, fill your sails, and go.

…That spiral of never ending change that lifts you up and takes you someplace you’ve never been before, then winds you back down to places you haven't been to in a long while, to refresh your spirit and blow the dust out of your wheels.

…This time of year, whenever it is.

…Singing. Really. I should have been a rock star.

...Green & Black's Maya Gold chocolate. Dark. Creamy. Rich. Anything else just isn't worth it.

...Sleeping through the night (not always easy if you've been eating chocolate).

...Laughing. Because I don't do it enough.

...Dancing: the Hustle, the Bump, or Bomba with Dominick. It's all good.

...Freaks and Geeks. Far and away the best TV show ever. Brings me back to 1980, when I found myself doing the Lindsay-thing, trying to ditch the egg-head identity for a cooler vibe. Never did quite shed the geek thing fully, and I'm glad for it.

...Walking on sidewalks, crunching through the leaves, trying not to step on cracks, jumping from line to line, tree to tree, lost in an ambulatory haze of meditative delight.

...Any kind of walking. But you knew that.

...Animals. Nearly every kind. Even humans, though there have been days in my life that I have wondered if perhaps I get along better with animals of the non-human variety than I do with animals of the human variety.

...the Galapagos Islands. If you have never been, don't go; too many tourists are ruining the fragile ecosystems of these amazing islands, an evolutionary laboratory, Darwin's inspiration. Just know that they are breathtakingly beautiful, each one different, and home to animals that are found nowhere else on earth. I feel profoundly grateful that I was able to spend 8 days on the islands a few years ago. Trip of a lifetime.

...Costa Rica! The people, the food, the landscape, the Pura Vida vibe. Grateful for the time to experience a slower pace, and to be reminded of that essential, shimmering essence of living your days, through our connections with others, to nature, and to ourselves.