And, In The End…
March 4th, 2008
No, this isn’t the gullet of the asteroid creature in The Empire Strikes Back. It’s gross! It’s obscene! It’s my cecum!
The cecum or caecum (from the Latin caecus meaning blind) is a pouch connected to the ascending colon of the large intestine and the ileum.
Today, I had a colonoscopy of the initial screening variety. Nary a pocket nor a polyp in sight, I was relieved to learn. Here was how the doctor looked through my drugged gaze. Yikes!
Actually, the moment they hit me with the sedative I was out. It doesn’t take much to get me to fall asleep! (That reminds me. I still need to write my TM post.) I sort of remember some of the procedure, but not much. I didn’t wake up until I was back where I started, in the recovery area.
The real fun was yesterday, of course. As with painting and wallpapering, success depends on the prep.
Filed under: All Posts, Life with Pratts
12 Comments
1. D. F. Rogers | March 4th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Wow! What a Fantastic Voyage that must have been!
2. DOuG pRATt | March 4th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
The darn doctor wouldn’t give me the video of the examination. He says he’ll post it on YouTube and I’ll have to download it from there.
3. Monte Schulz | March 5th, 2008 at 1:32 am
Good news on the results. Colon cancer is what killed Dad, and he was, sadly, complicit in his own disease by refusing to have a colonscopy. I’ve had two, and good results from both. Unfortunately, for my first one, the drugs did NOT put me out!
4. jeanie beanie | March 5th, 2008 at 6:42 am
Wow! What a psychedelic doc! But Dennis is right; if the young version of Raquel Welsh was there, you missed out! Glad you got a clean bill. Once again, our twin ESP kicks in, as my colonoscopy is scheduled for tomorrow! Today I suffer the starve and purge. “There’s always room for Jello!” (except for red).
5. DOuG pRATt | March 6th, 2008 at 1:14 am
Monte,
I was thinking about your father when I scheduled my appointment. A friend of mine is 62, and he has never had a colonoscopy, simply because he doesn’t want to deal with the preparation. It’s not fun, I admit!
6. jeanie beanie | March 6th, 2008 at 7:27 am
URK. It’s 7:26 a.m. and I’ve suffered through 24 plus hours of the “prep.” Hardly any sleep last night; wishing for bedside commode. Monte, how did I not know that about your father? I always thought it was his magnificent heart just stopping. He did have heart attacks in the past, didn’t he? And Monte, the drugs never put me out, either.Versed lasts about two seconds. I first noticed this with Novacaine when I was a kid. They had to double the dose for it work. Some doctor once told me I have a “very efficient liver.” I asked if that was bad, and they said no, that was good, but some medicines might not work as well.
7. DOuG pRATt | March 6th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
24 hours? My actual prep was 4-5 hours, but after that, of course, I couldn’t eat anything but Jello, and nothing by mouth after midnight.
Monte says his Comics Journal essay includes details about his father’s death. Schulz died of a heart attack, but he was on the way down from inoperable colon cancer, and prior to getting that diagnosis he’d had a stroke. The evidence of that was seen in Sparky’s TV appearance with Al Roker.
8. jeanie beanie | March 7th, 2008 at 8:07 am
I remember that interview! Al Roker, of course, studied cartooning in college; he’s not half-bad at it. I flunked my colonoscopy! The doctor could not go in because adhesions from my partial hysterectomy were” too extensive” and had narrowed the “sigmoid” too far. He would have had to perforate the lining. Now I have to do the prep all over again and go for something even more fun … a barium enema!
9. Monte Schulz | March 8th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
No, actually he did not have any heart attacks, nor did he die of one. He had quadruple bypass surgery in 1981 to prevent a heart attack, and he died, more than likely, from a pulmonary embolism. It had been a problem throughout his chemo treatment, which blood thinners to use without causing his tumor to bleed. None of it mattered in the end, though, because he had lost his will to live, given his bleak prognosis. Anyhow, I wrote a lot about all that in my essay. You’ll see. JB, sorry about the colonoscopy and the prep. I worried about what might happen if I did the prep, and then the doctor was too sick for whatever reason to perform the procedure. I was told that someone would do it, no matter what, because, no, they would not force me to go through the prep again.
10. DOuG pRATt | March 8th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Every news report I found said he had a heart attack, so I dutifully repeated that. The book says, “complications of colon cancer.” Thanks for the correction, Monte!
11. jeanie beanie | March 12th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Monte, I’ve read that post-op depression is pretty common. Maybe your father had a touch of that after the bypass. It’s a guy thing. It certainly applies to my husband. He’s 57 and has non-chronic atrial fibrillation, meaning, he only gets it occasionally under certain stressful circumstances. When it happens, he gets bummed out and blames himself for something he can’t control! It’s a big reminder of his MORTALITY!
My barium enema is rescheduled for next week. The prep is WORSE than for a colonoscopy, and takes TWO DAYS. URK.
12. DOuG pRATt | March 12th, 2008 at 11:06 am
I had PVC (premature ventricular contraction) one year while getting ready for the Boston Marathon. I always lose so much salt during long, hot runs that it cakes on my face when dry. I let myself get depleted and dehydrated too much one day, and my heart started skipping beats like crazy. Got myself checked out, and was confirmed as being OK, but since then I’ve carried water or Gatorade with me, and I’m extra careful on particularly hot days.
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