The mind, know­ing some­thing painful or unpleas­ant is going to hap­pen to the body, can pre­pare for such sit­u­a­tions. Which is why I wasn’t ready for this. I didn’t wake up this morn­ing, and think, “At some point today, some­one will put a plas­tic tube in my ass, and shine a flash­light into it”.

Yet this is exactly what hap­pened. With a lack of for­mal­ity, after telling me to “Just relax”, the doc­tor inserts a specu­lum (in this case, the aptly named “anoscope”) in my anal cavity.

Unprepared for the sen­sa­tion, I brace myself and grab the edge of the bed. I wouldn’t say that the feel­ing was painful as much as…unsa­vory.

“Just try to relax”, he repeats, with words added about an attempt. I thought he was already all the way in. I was wrong. With a thrust, he goes deeper.

I can’t stop laugh­ing. It’s half ner­vous, half hys­ter­i­cal. This doc­tor must think I’m enjoy­ing this.

But no doc­tor has ever done this before, or been so thor­ough in going over my symp­toms, and it’s a far cry from the health­care I’ve been get­ting before. So, after he lit­er­ally wipes of my ass of the excess lubri­ca­tion and I’m tuck­ing the tails of my dress shirt into my pants, I thank him.

Wait. I hope he doesn’t take that the wrong way.

Colonoscopy kit

He tells me I need a colonoscopy. As I’m book­ing my appoint­ment, the recep­tion­ist hands me a colonoscopy kit (at $25) which includes:

  • 2 bot­tles of mag­ne­sium cit­rate (a saline laxative)
  • 2 bisacodyl tablets (an overnight drug laxative)
  • 2 dimen­hy­dri­na­tel tablets (used to pre­vent nausea)

The lax­a­tives are to com­pletely clean out my sys­tem so they can see what’s going on inside my colon. The nau­sea tablets are to coun­ter­act the unpleas­ant taste of the mag­ne­sium cit­rate. I haven’t been able to eat any­thing with seeds three days prior, and noth­ing but clear liq­uids at two days until the pro­ce­dure. Unfortunately, I’m off for two days from work and a night of Tai Chi, as the first round of lax­a­tives has me run­ning to the bath­room at fre­quent inter­vals. Louise is dri­ving me to the clinic and back, as I’ll be given two seda­tives dur­ing the pro­ce­dure: one to relax me, and one to make me groggy. I’m just hop­ing that I’ll pass out, and wake up when it’s over.

Up until this month, I had pretty much given up on doc­tors. The last four I’ve seen, includ­ing my fam­ily doc­tor, have told me the same thing before dis­miss­ing me: that the stom­ach pains and diar­rhea are from IBS or gas­troen­teri­tis, and that I need to eat more fibre, or it’ll pass. None of them cared. None of them lis­tened. After sit­ting for a cou­ple hours in the wait­ing room, I would never see a doc­tor for more than ten minutes.

My stom­ach prob­lems have been going on for longer than I first real­ized. It’s strange when I tell some of old acquain­tances that I have an upcom­ing colonoscopy — peo­ple I haven’t spo­ken to in years — and the reac­tion is uni­ver­sal; sur­prise that the prob­lems still going on. I guess I just got used to it. But the pain has only recently got­ten worse, to the point where I decided that I needed to demand help.

So I’d been going to the walk-in clinic, play­ing doc­tor roulette, try­ing to get a dif­fer­ent one each time. And luck­ily enough, I found one who actu­ally cares. He told me he went on strike in 1986 to pre­vent the gov­ern­ment from tak­ing over the health­care sys­tem. He lost. Jokingly, he told me I wouldn’t have to pay a cent, as if this was the most impor­tant point, and that his loss was my hol­low victory.

We went over my test results from a pre­vi­ous con­sul­ta­tion with another doc­tor. I was pos­i­tive on three fecal occult blood tests, out­side of nor­mal lim­its. He ques­tioned why I had these tests done though, as they check for blood that’s not vis­i­bly appar­ent, and the blood in my stool is not only vis­i­ble, it stains the water. I was neg­a­tive on Helicobacter Pylori, a bac­te­ria that can cause sim­i­lar symp­toms to the ones I’ve been hav­ing. But the last doc­tor only tested for this spe­cific bac­te­ria. Not liver or kid­ney func­tion, iron lev­els, or any­thing else that may be asso­ci­ated with blood loss. I was writ­ten another req­ui­si­tion for more blood work.

He also com­pletely con­tra­dicted the last doc­tor (who told me that only my fam­ily doc­tor could rec­om­mend me to a spe­cial­ist), and wrote me a let­ter to a gas­troen­terol­o­gist on the other side of town.

I asked if he was accept­ing new patients. He wasn’t, but I could see him as long as I didn’t mind wait­ing, since he’s at the clinic every day. He knew I could tell there was some­thing dif­fer­ent about the way he prac­tices med­i­cine. He cares. Unfortunately, it’s at the expense of his profit, as he spends the appro­pri­ate amount of time on each patient, instead of rush­ing to get to the next one. Before leav­ing, we shook hands. I was glad to find a doc­tor who lived up to the degree and Hippocratic oath, and he was glad there was a patient who could appre­ci­ate this.

So my colonoscopy is tomor­row. To be hon­est, I’m ner­vous. Even though I know a few peo­ple who have gone through the pro­ce­dure1, all of them telling me that the prepa­ra­tion is worse than the pro­ce­dure itself, I still don’t know what to expect. In the end, I’m just glad it’s hap­pen­ing. I don’t want to be scared of leav­ing my house any­more. I don’t want to be unsure every day of how my stom­ach will be. I want a bet­ter qual­ity of life.

  1. Including John’s dad, who has it done every year, as his grand­fa­ther died from colon can­cer. He also does it with­out anes­thetic, which, to me, is a sign of latent masochism. [↑]