Just a little sedated

It's one of those summer stormy afternoons.  Pickles the Dog has found a nice place to wait out the thunder and lightening - in the hallway, away from windows, her nose sticking around the corner so she can keep an eye on us. 

I survived a colonoscopy this morning.  I don't mean to make light of it, it's a big deal.  The prep for it is no fun at all.  I hadn't had anything solid to eat since Sunday morning, and even then not much.  And Monday night was loads of fun, when I got to take a bunch of laxatives and mix 238 ml of Miralax with 64 fl. Oz. of Gatorade and drink it all.  I think it's neat how we mix systems of measurement so easily in this country.  Where else but America would instructions tell you to mix 238 ml of anything with 64 Oz. of anything else?  Anyway, the expected results of that concoction occurred.  And occurred.   I only managed to get 60 Oz or so of the Gatorade down, because I thought I was going to throw up.  So I just stopped, and it seemed to work fine.  It will be a long, long time before I have anything lemon-lime again.

This morning we drove to the Medical Specialties center in Hickory, and I have no complaints. Everyone seemed friendly and re-assuring, courteous and quite professional, always helpful to someone who like me is basically a-feared of the whole process. One thing I noticed, as I looked around the waiting room, was there was lots of people there who did not seem to be feeling good. I can understand why.  It was easy to see who were patients, and who was there to drive them home.

I was sedated for the procedure.  And that was interesting.   I could feel myself loosing consciousness, and there was nothing I could do about it.  As a game, I decided to see how long I could stay conscious through sheer will power.  A few seconds, and I dont think will power played a role.  I was out, then suddenly I was in a whole different room with people making me wake up and sit up and get up and put my clothes on and drink a pepsi and get out of there.   Not really.  Well, sort of. It probably seemed a lot faster to me than it really was, because I was moving very slowly.

I'm convinced this screening can be a life saver.

A few years back one of my uncles died much too young from colon cancer.  I keep thinking that if he had been screened when he was my age, he'd probably be alive now.   Anyway I'm good for another 10 years, so they say.  They said they'd send a reminder out to me about 8 years from now, which I think is so cool.  They might have been joking tho, 'cause things were going over my head for awhile.  It's been over 6 hours now, and I can still feel the drug a bit.  I don't know if that is normal or not.   

But its over with, and a beautiful morning has tuned into a beautiful stormy afternoon.  I think I'll sleep well tonight.