Let’s talk colonoscopy.
It’s a language most people don’t
speak, especially men.
Three reasons according to me:
the self-consciousness of being naked in front of strangers; the perceptions of
possible pain; and the paralyzing fear of what the look-see will reveal, the
doctor coming in and saying, “Well, Mr. Cothern, you won’t have to buy any
Christmas presents this year.”
Okay.
Again, speaking for myself, I
feel extremely vulnerable when in the room with two nurses who really could
care less what my flabby body looks like and with my doctor standing near and
putting on gardening gloves. My penis usually shrinks to the size of a two-chamber
unshelled peanut.
No pain. Something akin to
Michael Jackson’s doctor sending me to Never-never Land but with no terminal
results, whatever they gave me floated me away so quickly I didn’t have time to
even think of any lyric to Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me”—much less count backwards.
Having two brothers who had
prostate cancer, one eventually succumbing to Cancer of the Everything for (perhaps)
not learning the language of regular checkups, having had glaucoma and going
totally blind in my left eye, having had RA for four decades and diverticulosis
to go along with that as a steady and painful companion—not until old age
avoiding seeds and such and great spicy foods and cigarettes and alcohol and
wild women (I wished as a much younger man)—I did fear what the doctor would
find. I feared not being strong enough while losing everything. I had put off
getting answers for years. Ignoring my pain and stomach problems meant I didn’t
have anything serious. My gastroenterologist did find and removed four
pre-cancerous polyps, which was good news, but he also found some scar tissue
from the diverticulosis that is blocking some of the lower reaches of The River
Bowel and no doubt had been causing a lot of my pain over the years. Still, not
really horrible news, and after dealing with the blockade, Christmas shopping
(online) is still on my schedule.
So why this public service post?
Maybe to get one friend to have any
kind of checkup?
Perhaps. But I know how difficult it is to begin language acquisition so late in life.
But these few paragraphs also just serve to illustrate that as humans we build up expectations so high that nothing can meet our good wishes. Everything we fear has us dead by morning. Like most things encountered in the boat being rowed upstream, the truth of it all lies somewhere in between.
