Our Founder, Michelle, was very brave to have her colonoscopy videotaped and shared here. I promised my hubby that I would not have him play cameraman.
Because we have a history of colon cancer in my family, and because I have had GI issues all my life, complicated by lupus, I'm supposed to have a colonoscopy done every few years. Well, I thought it had only been 10 years since my last confession...I mean, procedure. Wrong, my doctor informed me it had been 20 years. Oops!
I probably would have gone another decade, except that a recent bout of mesenteric lymphadenitis, followed by another bout of something mysterious, caused my doctor to send me to my GI specialist for further exploration, no pun intended. Hi, GI ("guy").
The preliminary prep wasn't too bad, except that I had to eat a whole lot of stuff that I wouldn't ordinarily, like low fiber, "white" foods. The day I started that routine, I went to the pharmacy to fill my prescription for TriLyte. The pharmacist was hilarious. He said, "there are flavor packets, pick one, it won't taste really good." After explaining how to mix the stuff that I already knew was going to go down with lots of cajoling of the senses, he said, "stay close to the bathroom." Fine.
My procedure was on Tuesday, so I didn't have to deal with the concoction until Monday. Meanwhile, the pre-prep eating regimen was leaving me feeling undernourished for my scheduled long training run. OK, so I wasn't going to run over the weekend, no problem. I just did a marathon in June, so I'll be fine, I told myself.
Monday's requirement was a clear liquid diet and water most of the day and I was absolutely starving. Walking around the house light-headed was better than trying to drive to work and back, so it was a good thing that I had taken the day off. The gallon of concoction in the fridge was trying to call my name, but I was trying to ignore it until the "appointed" hour. Have you ever drunk flat Alka-Seltzer? Well, that's what Trilyte tastes like, except worse. Enough said.
Apparently the procedure went well, no polyps or perforations were found. My "old friends" were still there, but they've been with me since my first pregnancy 30 years ago and aren't going anywhere anytime soon. I remember hearing my GI's voice talking to my hubby, but I don't remember getting dressed, being wheeled to the car, or eating pancakes and bacon at IHop. OK, so I must have requested it, or my hubby would not have taken me there.
The verdict: no running in extreme temperatures. My GI told my hubby that I must be reaching a point during my long runs when my leg muscles are trying to pull oxygenated blood from my organs, thereby putting me into the serious cramping I'd been experiencing. But, we're going through a summer of record high triple digit thermometer readings.
Fine. So, I get to train indoors or in water over the rest of the summer, yay! And, I get to celebrate not having any new issues in my intestines, no diverticulitis, nothing to fear. Was it worth going through a gallon of flat alka-seltzer to find nothing wrong?
You betcha!