Journey to the Center of My Colon

Why is it that whenever people know that you are going through one of the more stressful moments of your life, other people involved tell you to relax? Without getting too graphic, that's what the nurse kept telling me-that I needed to relax. When the procedure started, I tried to relax. But there is no better way to make sure that someone doesn't relax by telling him or her to relax. She would have been smarter just to give me drugs.

Anyway, my yoga and karate training, while not necessarily training me in yoga or karate, did train me to breath properly. So, I breathed my best yoga/karate breathing. That, and I followed the nurse's advice to rub my belly to minimize the discomfort. It all seemed to work.

The procedure I got was the halfway up procedure. It has a long medical name. But it's where they go through your lower colon to see what's there.

I was watching the screen when they turned on the camera that was about to go up my rectum and journey to where no man has ever gone before. The first thing I saw were lighting fixtures. My first thought was that I didn't know that I had lighting fixtures up there. But, or course, they hadn't gone there yet. The lighting fixtures were the ones that hung in the room.

Then, as the camera was directed towards the massive, white mound that I affectionately refer to as "my ass," I couldn't help but think of some of the older rides at Disneyland-especially the Peter Pan ride. As the doors that I affectionately refer to as "my buttocks" opened and the camera sailed in, I could almost here the voice of Peter Pan himself shouting "Okay, kids, here we go!"

The next impression I had was, as I watched the journey begin, how seemingly endless our assholes are.

The camera went round each bend smoothly. As in a Disney ride, I thought about how, around each bend, some villain would appear suddenly causing shrieks among the children. I remembered, during the Snow White ride, how the Evil queen, now transformed into a witch, would suddenly appear, holding that poisoned apple. Of course, no witch appeared with her poisoned apple.

But there was a polyp.

In fact, just after the doctor had reached the end of his journey, just after the nurse had said, "Okay, we're almost done," a little bump in my lower colon appeared onscreen. It looked as pink and healthy as the rest of my lower colon. But the doctor said, "Hmmm, let's get a sample of that polyp."

He then asked me, and I had been asked that earlier by the nurse, "Do you have a family history of colon cancer?"

I told him "No."

"Good," he said.

He took a sample of the polyp. Then another, which pretty much eliminated the polyp from my lower colon.

And, as he finished the procedure, he told me that they would examine the sample and that I would know in about a week-and-a-half whether or not they needed to perform a full colonoscopy.

I have since been told that finding polyps is not that uncommon. That, if it had been an actual cancerous tumor, they would have scheduled surgery immediately. So, that is a little reassuring.

I was also told by my SiL that this news meant that my next half-assed exploration would be in three years instead of five. Also reassuring.

So, I guess I'll hear soon about what the next step will be.

But let me use this experience to remind my eight-or-so faithful readers: colon cancer is one of the most deadly forms of cancer. When it is caught early, it is highly curable. Yes, it's one of the yucky-most forms of cancer to get tested for, but getting tested early is better than some of the alternatives.