It's For Your Own Good..

I was at my doctor a couple of months ago and in the course of our discussion, he said "You're getting close to 50, you should go ahead and get a colonoscopy". I thought to myself "Whoa, What? Let's not go overboard here doc!". He asked who I wanted to use and I said "Dr. McCombs". Both Donna and my father-in-law go to him and really like him. He took really good care of Donna when she was having issues a couple of years ago. So, he got me signed up for an appointment with one of the PAs there.

I went to my appointment secretly hoping I'd get out of doing the colonosocopy. The PA talked with me at length and I told her I was having no issues. Alas, she said "Well since you are getting close to 50, let's go ahead and schedule it". So we did. She gave me a prescription for something called NuLytely and instructions for using it. My appointment wasn't for over a month, so I set the stuff aside.

About a week before my appointment, Donna went and got my prescription. She came back with what looked to be an enormous jug with white powder in it. I found out I was to drive 12 8 ounce glasses of this stuff the night before along with 2 Ducolax tablets. I had to drink 4 more glasses the next morning before my 11:30 appointment. There were four flavor packets you could choose from (cherry, orange, pineapple and lemon-line). I somehow doubted it was going to make the stuff taste like Kool-Aid.

For the week before, you are not supposed to eat beans, seeds, popcorn, peanuts, etc. I knew Josh and I were going to watch the Cardinals play the Saturday before and part of the deal with our seats was free food (including popcorn). I had Donna call hoping again I might get out of it by saying I'd be eating popcorn. Again, no luck. They said "Oh, one night will be OK".

The day before the procedure, you have to have a liquid diet. You are limited to Popsicles, broth and jello. You also cannot have any red or purple colored jello. My two favorite flavors of course are cherry and grape. So, I was limited to orange and blueberry. Donna strained three cans of chicken noodle soup for me. Josh got all the good stuff in his lunch and I got broth.

That night, I started with the liquid. I'd been warned to have something with you when you started this since you'd be "stuck in one spot" for a while. I took my new Stan Musial book Josh got me for Father's Day plus my laptop with Netflix playing. I had Donna mix in the cherry flavoring. The stuff wasn't too bad to start with. I drank the first couple of glasses at 15 minute intervals wondering what would happen. I didn't wait too long. I won't go into the gross details, but it was like a nuclear laxative kicked in. I got through eight glasses chugging them right down. After that, the last four got tougher and tougher. I got all twelve down though. I went to bed after that. I only got up a few times in the night.

Starting the next morning at 7, I worked on the last four glasses. I thought being hungry would help, but getting those four down wasn't as easy as it'd been the night before. I'd put away a gallon of that stuff. That cherry flavoring didn't seem as good at this point. We left at about 10:30 and even ran a few errands (with me close to a bathroom if need be of course) without issue. We got to the Gastro center at Western Baptist about 11:20. I filled out the usual paperwork and was ushered back to a room to wait. The nurse put an IV in and showed up a film about how a colonsocopy works.

Finally about 1:00pm, a nurse came to wheel me back. I looked at Donna and told her I loved her and back I went. They wheeled me into the room and I could see the monitor they would use to see how my colon looked. I could even see the tubing and I thought "Wow, that looks like a lot". Dr. McCombs put his hand on my shoulder and said "Mr Yancy, lets get this done and get you to lunch, OK?" I thanked him and said "Yes Sir!". The nurse started putting the knockout stuff in my IV and said "Here comes the good stuff!". I remember thinking if I should close my eyes. Next thing I knew, I was back in the room where I started. It was like they flipped a switch and I had gone completely out.

I saw Donna's beautiful face and knew I had made it fine. They gave me some Diet Coke to drink. They make you do something quite a bit before you leave. To put it delicately, since they put air in your colon to inflate it to see it better, that gas has to come out before they let you go. Being a male, this was a piece of cake. I looked at Donna once and thought she was crying. Turns out, she was laughing so hard, she had tears in her eyes. They wheeled me out to the curb and Donna picked me up. She then told me how I kept repeating "Dr. McCombs sure looked different" about 10 or 11 times. She also said I was quizzing the nurse about every beverage they had until picking what she knew I would - Diet Coke. That's some mighty good stuff they put in that IV I guess. She told me that everything was fine and they'd removed a small polyp and said I should eat a bit more fiber. Donna fed me when I got home and I just relaxed the rest of the night while my personal nurse took great care of me. I had no problem getting up and heading to work the next day.

Now, let me talk to my friends/classmates that are my age. This really wasn't anywhere as bad as you might sometimes be lead to believe. Please don't put it off and risk not finding colon cancer until its too late. I can tell you the people at the Gastro Center were great and took wonderful care of me. The only bad thing was I would have thought with two days of a liquid diet/not eating that I might drop a pound or two. Alas, that didn't happen..

Doctor, Doctor, give me the news

In the past week, I ended up having to make two trips to the Western Baptist Emergency Room.

The first was on Thursday. I got a call from Donna saying the school had called her and Josh had cut his finger in Physics lab. I went to the school to get him. He was in the nurse's office lying down. Turned out, he had felt faint when coming to see the nurse, so he had to lie down. She showed me the finger and it was obvious he'd sliced it pretty good and it'd need stitches.

We got to the Western Baptist ER and I was shocked to see that no one was in the waiting room. I began to wonder if it was closed down. It wasn't though. We got in, the doctor looked at his finger, a young lady sewed up his finger (7 stitches), and we were out in an hour and half. That has to be a world record. Josh was even able to go back to school (his choice, not ours). He said the worst part of the experience was all the ribbing he took at school.

The second visit was more serious. I got a call at work Tuesday afternoon from Donna's mom from Donna's cel phone. I knew right then that something was wrong since her mother has probably used a cel phone less than five times in her life. She hold me Donna was having chest pains and an ambulance was coming to get her. I left work and headed to the ER. They took me right back, but she wasn't there yet. Dr. Tim Mabry was there (a friend of ours from church and fellow deacon). He went and found out that she was en route and kept giving me updates as to how close she was. It turned out they (the EMTs) had done some things at the house so that is why it took longer.

She got checked in and in one of the ER rooms for patients with suspected heart issues. They did tests and couldn't find any heart issues but decided to keep her overnight to monitor her. This was the first time she'd been in the hospital since Josh was born 17 years ago. They did multiple tests (including a stress test and ultrasound) and found no heart or blot clot issues. They finally decided to go down the route of acid reflux and are treating her for that.

Some random thoughts

• You should always wear the proper hand protection when cutting things.
  
• WBH was great. Everybody there was really nice. They even gave me a meal the evening Donna was checking out so I didn't have to forage out for food.
  
• Donna had been having pains, but kept putting off going to the doctor because she was "too busy". She (and my brother too) would tell you now that if you have symptoms, don't put off a doctor's visit.
  

Thanks to everybody for the prayers and the concern you've shown for us over the past week.