WAITING

Today I was waiting until I got a new wireless keyboard installed because my $2.99 keyboard (that I bought as an accessory to my laptop, seldom used,) was drawn into full service to one of my desktops that had died just before I left for the hospital for a colonoscopy.

Hospitals are, perhaps, where we wait the longest.  Scheduled .for 12 noon for the procedure, I was finally taken in at 1:30 PM.  The nurse who was going to hook me up to the intravenous saline and whatever else they gave for pain and relaxation, told me I was a 'roller'.  Unfamiliar with the term in present use,  I had images of Las Vegas and knew that meaning to be far from the truth.  She said it meant that when she stuck the needle in, instead of going through to its target, the vein just rolled.  Not only that but she said she hit a 'valve' and it 'blew up'.  By now I figured we needed a plumber, for sure.  Instead, she said she was calling in the 'big guns'.  A much older nurse arrived, used a thinner needle, tried again, and said she had to call in a specialist.  A very kind, gentle, 'expert' told me why they couldn't get blood...asked if I had taken the 'prep to the procedure' which, I assured her, I had as directed..  She told me the reason I saw big veins on the back of my hands the night before, and not today, was that I was dehydrated. Since I had taken all that was prescribed to leave me vying for colon cleanliness with whoever has the Guinness book of records on it,  I was plugged into the intravenous bag dripping saline solution. I could only wish they had plumbed me into it earlier rather than trying to find a vein to pierce in my dehydrated hands but that would have been cart before the horse and impossible..

I was knocked out even though I had asked not to be and they said they couldn't knock me out without an anesthesiologist present. I was told they only gave something to loosen muscles and relax one but thqat some patients fall asleep.in waiting mode.  I woke up only after the amnesic drug they had given me wore off quite a while later.

A friend drove me home, first stopping at Staples to pick up a new keyboard.  However, Morpheus creeped in where computers feared to tread so here I am, a few hours later than usual.  Sorry you had to wait for this blog...if any of you actually were kind enough to do so.

PREPARATION FOR A COLONOSCOPY

The only thing worse than having a colonoscopy is preparing for one.  At least most people are knocked out when they get the procedure.  They wake up feeling great from the residual of muscle relaxants, knowing that it's all over and they can eat and drink again.

Ten years ago when I had my first colonoscopy, I refused to be to sleep.  I was given enough meds to assure that I would be relaxed and awake.  The monitor was right beside me to watch as the yards of camera on the end of the rotor router traveled to the end of the tunnel.  I saw where my appendix would have been had it not been removed   I thought back to that time, when Spike Jones had recorded Chloe,  Cocktails for Two, and other gems played on the radio (this was before TV was in hospital rooms).  I had been given a spinal and since my butt weighs more than my torso, my head had been elevated; I got the air bubble up my spine to produce the mother of all headaches.  The sutures from the surgery (arthroscopy hadn't been invented yet, either) made not only laughing painful but smiling, as well.  Everything anyone said or was broadcast was funny.  It was later that the news invented violence, murders, and sadness.

But I digress.  My instructions read that I should not take a long list of things I don't take anyway, like every known over-the-counter pain-reliever and anti-inflammatory.   So many seemed like the 'in' thing, like Ecotrin, Bufferin, Nuprin, Motrin.  I wasn't to take any iron, though I don't take that either.  Three days before the procedure I was not to eat legumes, peas, carrots, tomatoes, watermelon or nuts.  I read that too late and since my short term memory priority doesn't cover meals, I had no idea what I had eaten of those on the do-not-eat list which I changed to the do-not-tell list.  If the government can make silly rules, I will,too, as well.

The whole day before the procedure only a clear liquid diet is allowed.  The only things I allowed myself, so that I didn't have to drink things I don't normally drink, were coffee, tea and bouillon.  Be evening I was trying to figure how I could turn the woodwork into clear liquid.  At 7 PM as things shifted to no more clear fluids, but specifically 15 oz. of Citrate of Magnesia.  Fortunately I don't find that taste too bad as it is sort of like Quinine Tonic on steroids with tartness added.  The quantity, however, presents a problem.  It should be followed within the next 2 hours by three 8 oz glasses of water.  It would have been easier to just put the garden hose in my mouth until my stomach stretched to capacity.

The object is to have your intestines as clean and pure as a brand new and unused, PVC pipe.  For anyone who has ever taken a dog to training school, the embarrassment of your dog having an 'accident' while in class is nothing to the embarrassment of having a faint tan hue seen by the camera lens in your colon..

The first 15 oz. of Citrate of Magnesia is followed by another round of the same five hours before the procedure, it is again followed by three 8oz glasses of water within two hours.  By now your abdomen looks like one of those water-filled balloons that is deadly if you drop it off the roof onto a pedestrian.  After cleaning out the Aegean stables of your colon, you are now ready to face (well not exactly face, I guess) the doctor who will do a 'wrong way Corrigan' looking for mines, in medical terms, polyps...or anything further along the disaster scale.  Meanwhile, keep your eye on the goal...there is food to be had again when the all-clear is sounded at the end of the tunnel.