Sheela Clary

Dear readers, I have been deep in the bowels of three cognitively arduous writing projects this past month. I feel the need to purge them from my mind. So here I am cleansing my writer’s system, so to speak, of that intellectual sludge, to tell you all about my first colonoscopy.

Have you ever had a colonoscopy? If you live in the United States and you have a colon, you either know the scope or soon will. These days, hospitals give out colonoscopies like McDonald’s serves Big Macs.

My first nurse this morning told me they had, like, eight yesterday, six on tap for today, 10 tomorrow, and 16 on Monday.

Some people, like me, find this weird, get curious about the phenomenon, and start asking strangers about it. “I grew up abroad. Colonoscopies?” a local mother I had never spoken to before told me in our phone call this afternoon when we were supposed to be discussing Italian lessons. “Never heard of them. They just weren’t a thing there.”

Some people, on the other hand, are big fans, and might even prefer their colonoscopist to their life partner. “I just love the whole thing,” a teacher I was supposed to interview told me. “Getting all cleaned out, getting fretted over by all those people. It’s the best!”

Some people suffer from celiac and other stomach-related conditions and need to get colonoscopies fairly frequently. How frequently? “Can’t commit brain energy to this question currently,” said my friend with celiac to whom I had texted colonoscopy-related questions while she was on a work retreat.

Here is the most fundamental and mind-blowing fact I’ve learned about colonoscopies: Once it’s over, you’ll probably have zero idea you have had one. The doctors and nurses might have been performing a lobotomy, ingrown hair removal, or might have stood around shooting the shit and not touched you at all. This is because you are out cold, thanks to a shot of propofol, which acts as a sort of memory loss serum. I know, right? My nurse anesthetist … a k a 007.

There is also, if you are lucky, no physical evidence of the procedure after it’s over. “Colonoscopy? What colonoscopy? I don’t know ’bout no stinkin’ colonoscopy,” I could plausibly deny in a court of law, were I to be asked what I was doing from 9:30 to 10:30 on September 21, 2022.

For the colonoscopy preparation, however, you must be fully conscious, strong-stomached, and preferably unemployed and friendless. It requires you to go through a series of actions:

• You must visit your primary care physician 720 hours before the procedure, then visit the endoscopy doctor’s office two weeks later (360 hours before the procedure).
• Then you must wait for two little prescription bottles of sickly-sweet Drano that you will pay $174 for, because the much cheaper Drano that’s covered by health insurance is, like, even worse than Drano (180 hours before the procedure), then attempt to find the correct dosage instructions on the one-acre sheet of words typed in a six-point font that’s stuffed into the box with the Drano bottles (48 hours before the procedure).
• Stop taking food, half and half, prosecco, or anything else that gives you pleasure in life (24 hours before the procedure).
• Drink Drano bottle number one (16 hours before the procedure).
• Let Drano begin its evacuation protocols, while you are in an important meeting via Zoom, in which your feedback is requested at approximately the same intervals at which you need to excuse yourself (14 hours before the procedure).
• Force-feed yourself the second Drano bottle, followed by intervals of drinking and crying clear liquids (five hours before the procedure).
• Stop drinking liquids of all kinds. Longingly watch as your husband sips coffee, and children eat English muffins with peanut butter and jelly (two hours before the procedure).

Thus ends the preparation phase of your colonoscopy, and, so people told me, begins the good stuff. They told me, “The prep sucks, but the actual procedure is great.” They said, “You’re gonna love the drugs.” They promised, “You’re gonna wake up and feel like you’ve had the best nap of your life.”

Not so much. I’ve had better naps and taken better drugs. I woke up feeling a little swindled, to be honest. I’d hoped propofol would be one of the all-your-problems-go-away drugs, not a you-won’t-remember-a-thing drug. My brain can’t afford any more memory loss. It wasn’t doing so hot beforehand. For instance, after I’d listened carefully to the nurse’s explanation of how the anesthesia would be going through my IV tube and into my arm, I turned to ask the anesthesiologist if he’d be giving me a spinal. What I really could have used is a hippocamp-ectomy.

Now that I’m home in my pajamas, having just inhaled a cheeseburger with macaroni and cheese, and washed it down with three cups of coffee, I’m wondering how and when colonoscopies came to be the medical world’s Big Mac. Was it after Katie Couric made history by sharing the interior of her intestines with us on national television? This is my best guess. Then it occurs to me that I am a journalist. I don’t need to guess. I could go onto Google, and conduct some basic research to find the correct answer. Nah. I’m still technically under the influence of propofol, which sounds like an excellent excuse for laziness, so the hell with that.

I’m still here writing because I like the word propofol. It rhymes with everything. Power ball. Caterwaul. Waterfall. Wonder wall. Big and Tall.

Note: I do not mean with this bit of fun to downplay the seriousness of colorectal cancers or the wisdom of getting a colonoscopy as a core component of taking care of yourself. I went through the ordeal myself because I have family members who have died of these diseases. After skin cancers, colorectal cancers are the third most common form of cancer, and during colonoscopies, doctors identify and remove pre-cancerous polyps. Get in line, in other words!

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