Posts in category "Daily Life"

My First Colonoscopy

Warning: This may be a lit­tle too much infor­ma­tion for some. I find it fun­ny that almost a year ago, Tiana crowned her­self the win­ner of our inad­ver­tent com­pe­ti­tion on gross-out bod­i­ly func­tion blog­ging, and specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned that to top her peri­od-blog­ging I would need to do a live blog­ging of a colonoscopy. I was too sedat­ed to do a live blog­ging, so this is a night-of blog­ging.

Bishop takes rook-pawn, Tiana. Your move.

Before

The first (overnight) lax­a­tive is to clean out your colon of all sol­id wastes. It does­n’t kick in overnight, it starts work­ing in about an hour, which means you aren’t going to get much sleep.

The sec­ond lax­a­tive (mag­ne­sium cit­rate) makes your intes­tine absorb water through osmo­sis, so that you start pass­ing liq­uid for a more thor­ough clean­ing. The mag­ne­sium cit­rate was­n’t as bad tast­ing as I expect­ed (sort of a chem­i­cal­ly sour lemon­ade), but that, along with hav­ing to drink ten glass­es of water to make it effec­tive, did make me slight­ly nau­seous.

When liq­uid comes out of you from this end, it does­n’t make a nice con­tained splosh. No, it goes every­where. I lost track of how many times I went to the bath­room, and used almost two rolls of toi­let paper in two days. And when you wipe this many times, even three-ply, ultra-soft toi­let paper feels like it’s coat­ed in dia­mond dust and dipped in acid.

I was able to get through a decent chunk of my nov­el, The Last Light of the Sun, and learned from GQ how to “Work That Tan”, why Shia LaBeouf is the upcom­ing bad boy of Hollywood, and that Rolex makes a $37,500 nau­ti­cal watch.

You real­ly don’t feel like doing any­thing but lie around when going through this. As such, I was able to fin­ish God of War 2, and unlocked the awe­some Cod of War cos­tume, which still makes me laugh every time a Greek sol­dier address­es Kratos as “My lord!” when he’s wear­ing it.

During

Every per­son I spoke to who had a colonoscopy said that it was a breeze. Not so for me.

Pretty much as soon as they inject­ed the seda­tive into my IV, I passed out, only to be awok­en by bouts of agony. I’d say that for the entire pro­ce­dure I was only con­scious for about two min­utes in total, but those two min­utes were not fun. I don’t think I would have wok­en up if it was­n’t for the pain.

Part of the dis­com­fort is sup­posed to come from inject­ing air into the colon so they can bet­ter see the colon. I could­n’t tell if it was that, the instru­ment they used to do it, or the endo­scope itself snaking into my colon, but I felt a sharp pres­sure on both the anal cav­i­ty, and inside the colon.

I remem­ber scream­ing through grit­ted teeth, grab­bing the han­dles of the bed, swear­ing, and think­ing that I should have bet­ter man­ners before pass­ing out again.

At one point, some­one also had to hold me down, and uttered com­fort­ing words, but I could­n’t make out what he said.

After

Since the colon is inflat­ed with air, I was warned that I’d be pass­ing gas for a while after the pro­ce­dure. This is true, and very invol­un­tary.

I have severe ulcer­i­tive col­i­tis, which is an inflam­ma­to­ry bow­el dis­ease. The doc­tor showed me pic­tures of my colon; the right side is fine, but the left side is so inflamed that it’s black, red, and bleed­ing. All the infor­ma­tion is being sent to anoth­er spe­cial­ist, whom I’m very glad to be able to see soon.

I was pret­ty grog­gy for a while after, par­tial­ly because I had­n’t eat­en in two days, and par­tial­ly because of the seda­tive. Every time I stood up, I felt like I was going to pass out.

Right now, I have to take 12 pills a day, one of them being pred­nisone, a steroid to sup­press the over­ac­tive immune sys­tem respons­es, the oth­er being mesalamine, an anti-inflam­mi­to­ry drug to bring the swelling under con­trol. These drugs are scary. The side effects are pret­ty bad, but the doc­tor judged the ben­e­fits to out­weigh the poten­tial risks.

I may have to take pills (con­sid­ered “main­te­nance med­ica­tions” to pre­vent relapse) for the rest of my life. While I feel this low­ers my qual­i­ty of life, it’s much bet­ter than deal­ing with the flare-ups and side effects of col­i­tis. Aside from that, the only cure is to have part of my colon removed in surgery, which I real­ly don’t want to do.

The diag­no­sis of hav­ing a chron­ic diges­tive dis­ease is not great, but I’m very relieved to have an expla­na­tion of the mys­tery pains, along with a treat­ment plan.

I hate, hate, hate being alone when I’m feel­ing sick. My stom­ach still feels very fun­ny and unset­tled. So Julie came over last night to hang out a bit and to take my mind off every­thing, and watch some Robson Arms.

Helpless Wondering

I’m almost ready for spring. The win­ter isn’t get­ting on my nerves quite yet. The only thing I miss right now is being able to dri­ve com­fort­ably with­out a heavy coat on.

I’ve been feel­ing ter­ri­bly help­less late­ly. There are so many things in my life that are out of my con­trol — health, love, mon­ey, work — that I’ve actu­al­ly con­sid­ered doing a thought record for the first time since I fin­ished ther­a­py. Last week I woke up chok­ing in the mid­dle of the night. Then half way through the day I start­ed devel­op­ing mod­er­ate chest pains. I try not to wor­ry when I’m awake, but at night, in my sleep, every­thing comes out. Maybe every­thing is start­ing to get to me.

I want things to hap­pen quick­ly. I’m impa­tient. I want to be proac­tive, but there’s not much I can do. Verse 42 of the Tao Te Ching has been speak­ing to me:

Who knows what fate may bring —
  one day your loss may be your for­tune
  one day your for­tune may be your loss

While I usu­al­ly crave the flux between con­stan­cy and change, I pre­fer it in one thing at a time. It feels like I’m going through anoth­er tran­si­tion peri­od. Nothing around me is set­tled.

All I can do is wait to see where I end up.

Sunday Pot Luck Brunches

Gathering in the living room

Thumbnail: One of my smoothies
Thumbnail: Tim cooks bacon
Thumbnail: Wooden trivet
Thumbnail: Pancakes
Thumbnail: Fruit bowl
 

Tim is, as he puts it, cut from the same cloth as his uncle, inso­far as they both enjoy enter­tain­ing. They also live in a four-storey house, which is per­fect for such a thing.

So every Sunday, peo­ple come togeth­er for a casu­al pot luck brunch, where guests are invit­ed to bring food, the idea being that it’s be eas­i­er to bring a dish some­where and share with every­one than sit at home and make break­fast for your­self. Last time, I got to try fan­cy smoked bacon, and a pan­cake-bat­ter-cooked-in-bacon-grease exper­i­ment.

At this point, enough peo­ple know about it that no one has to men­tion ahead of time whether they’ll be com­ing, but there’s enough food for all.

Tim described this pret­ty well in a recent e‑mail:

Dear Everyone,

I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by coor­di­na­tion prob­lems.

Coordination prob­lems are sit­u­a­tions where all the actors involved are more or less on the same side, but there is imper­fect infor­ma­tion. Everyone wants the same gen­er­al out­come but isn’t sure how every­one else is going to get at it.

Driving is a solved coor­di­na­tion prob­lem. No one wants an acci­dent so we all want to dri­ve on the same side of the road, but there is noth­ing spe­cial about choos­ing the left or the right side. How do peo­ple pick?

In 1958, Thomas Schelling ran this exper­i­ment on a group of uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents in Connecticut: “Imagine that you are to meet some­one in New York City at noon, but you don’t know where and you can’t get in touch with them in advance. Where do you go?”

Without con­sult­ing one anoth­er, the major­i­ty of them picked the same loca­tion. I won­der if you can guess what it was (where would you go?).

Every week, we solve and re-solve a coor­di­na­tion prob­lem with brunch. Everyone wants a good and var­ied brunch spread. Different peo­ple come every week and no one RSVPs, so you can nev­er be sure what oth­er peo­ple will bring. We don’t con­sult in advance, I don’t assign dish­es or types of dish­es. The only infor­ma­tion we have is what was at brunch the pre­vi­ous week and my writ­ten sug­ges­tion about fruits, which is mer­ci­ful­ly ignored by most of you.

Yet every week brunch has a wide range of deli­cious foods. Isn’t that amaz­ing?

I think it’s amaz­ing.

Hope to see you on Sunday,

Tim

If I was par­tic­i­pat­ing in Schelling’s exper­i­ment, I would have cho­sen to meet at the clock in Grand Central Station; it’s always stood out to me because of the way it was promi­nent­ly fea­tured in the fan­ta­sy waltz sequence done by Terry Gilliam in The Fisher King. I had no idea that this was also the infor­ma­tion booth, and it’s this place exact­ly that most stu­dents chose.

And it goes with the peo­ple at brunch as well. When one per­son eats, anoth­er will get up to cook. When every­one is done eat­ing, the dish­es are all put away, the pans are all cleaned. With the wis­dom of crowds, noth­ing needs to be said.

I think it’s amaz­ing too.

French Toast

My intro­duc­tion to French toast with cin­na­mon and vanil­la and fresh fruit. When I was young, my mom would make French Toast, but it was plain eggs and bread.

It’s not what you’re think­ing though. The bot­tle of Crown Royal is filled with real maple syrup. Not whiskey((Coincidentally enough though, both liq­uids are Canadian icons.)).

God, it’s nice to have some­one cook for you in your own home.