It’s been a decade since I’ve reached that certain age where I get to have selfies taken where the sun don’t shine. In some ways it feels like just yesterday—I’m not sure if that’s denial or something worse.
Actually, something worse would be colon cancer. So of course now I’m thinking about former age-mate, fellow Wordo and author, Jay Lake, and writing, and mortality—and because it’s Jay, macabre clowns of baroque literary excess.
So maybe it is denial.
One thing I don’t recall from last time is not being able to eat whole grains or nuts for five days before The Procedure. It’s nearly impossible not to get a sandwich made with organic wholesomeness in this hippie town. Apparently, I graze on almonds and raisins a lot more than I’d realized.
Somehow, I survive on Greek yogurt and slices of turkey rolled into lettuce. At least chocolate is not on the list of forbidden solid foods, and tea counts as a clear fluid.
2:00PM — According to my notes from ten years ago, I felt a little like throwing up during the first Suprep round—I’m not sure if this is because of the awful taste or if it was upsetting to my digestive tract in general. In any case, a dose of ondansetron odt came with the Suprep kit, and—whoa! they give this stuff to chemotherapy patients?
2:30PM — Having delayed a little, I take the first swig of Suprep. The stuff tastes just as bad as it did ten years ago. Blaech.
2:35PM — Ah yes….although this time around the Suprep isn’t as reminiscent of grape mold and The Kool-Aid Man’s tears, each successive swig is somehow logarithmically worse than its predecessor. Yeuck!
2:40PM — Thank God for the lemonade I bought. Just a little chaser of it washes out the Suprep before it can chemically bond with my mucus membranes. Drinking Suprep is still like licking a twelve-volt battery, though. Mark mostly manages to stifle guffaws.
2:45PM — I appear to have lost my appetite. This is probably a good thing, because it will make me less likely to accidentally wander over to the kitchen in a low-glucose haze and absent-mindedly eat a bandana.
2:50PM — The Far Side cartoon ‘Gross Stories’ comes to mind: “And then, he slowly lifted the bucket of lard to his lips, and with a low, guttural sound, began to drink!” Can’t think why.
2:55PM — It is the Time Of Gurgling.
3:00PM — “You Have Died of Dysentery.” (I mean, I live in Oregon…)
3:05PM — About two years ago, we installed a bidet toilet seat—and I’m never going back. I don’t know how I got through this ten years ago without it.
7:00PM — Mark queues up ‘Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction’, a fun, silly Nordic film about a 19th C painter and the noble families he paints. We did wonder for a moment if the Young Heir might be gay, but he wasn’t. Less sexy than ‘Bridgerton,’ less mean than ‘Dangerous Liaisons.’ Wonderful costuming.
3:20AM — Hello Darkness, my old friend / I’ve come to—hey, you know, this stuff doesn’t taste like grape juice as much as I thought. It’s still hideous. I have to wonder if the grape flavor is some artifact of memory paired with my brain trying to convince itself that I’m not being poisoned with corrosion from ancient copper pipes. Or maybe Kool-Aid issued a cease-and-desist.
3:25AM — I pick up a copy of “Flash Fiction” and read stories at random, starting with a literary description of someone caught too close to a nuclear explosion. Another sip of Suprep and I’m randomly off to another piece about a paring knife lost and found and lost again under a fridge.
3:40AM — It’s kind of weird. According to my recollections, I was almost disablingly hungry at this point. Granted, it was later in the day—perhaps, when I’m in a waiting room in four or so hours, I will want to lick pictures of meals in glossy lifestyle magazines. Also it is hard to feel hungry with the taste of battery in your mouth.
3:53AM — The Second Gurgling.
3:55AM — The Second Gurgling, only a little lower down and to the left.
3:58AM — The Second Gurgling, only how did it get down *there* ?
4:20AM — The last of the Evil Brew is consumed. I go outside and look at the Summer Triangle and Venus. The moon is new and hidden. And then I feel a gurgling as of a distant host and hurry inside.
4:30AM — Now begins the time when I channel my inner Elizabethan Groom of the Stool and make comparisons of hue and clarity with the Prophesies of the Endoscopologists.
5:10AM — I sip the last tea of the morning. I’m hoping this will stave off any headaches.
5:30AM — Mark arises. The animals begin their morning, “No one has fed me, ever” routine.
6:08AM — Mark has been doing yoga stretches while dressed in a post-shower towel. He mentions something about joints and I ask, “So can octopi do yoga?”
He replies, “A good yoga teacher would be able to make adjustments.”
Then he turns to his closet and proceeds to get dressed, which calls to mind last night’s movie when the Lady Ehrengard strode, nude as Venus, into a pre-dawn lake to bathe.
While I’m appreciating his assets, Mark says, “I suppose I have to find a T-shirt,” and walks to our bedroom closet.
Interpreting his tone as almost Eeyorish, I return to the keyboard, only to hear him say.
“Where’d my lover go? He didn’t follow me. How can tease my husband getting dressed if he’s not here?”
“What? I heard you say you wanted a shirt and thought you didn’t want to be pestered.”
Mark channels his inner C+C Music Factory: “Hey ladies / have you had your man / walk away and spoil your plans …”
I sing the guitar riff: “Doot doo-doo, doot-doot-doo. Doot doo-doo, doot-doot-doo.”
Mark: “Things that make you go poo.”
John: “Things that make you go poo. Eeuw-Eeuw-Eeuw!”
Mark: “It’s those things that make you go, things that make you go poo.”
My stomach gurgles.
6:35AM — Mark takes the dog to the dog park and I get ready.
6:50AM — Emerging from the shower, I decide what to wear. I want something that’s easy to get into and out of, since I’ll probably be wearing a gown without a back when I’m at the center. My athleisurewear sweatpants are the obvious choice for the bottom, and for the top I choose…The World’s Most Favorite Cat Shirt.
I empty out my purple grab-and-go bag—which I’ve been using as a gym bag at the YMCA—and throw things like Ada Palmer’s “Inventing the Renaissance”, a spare sweater, a soft folder with paperwork, my Book of Art, the Bag of Pens, an emergency applesauce pod, spoon, and blue starry napkin into it.
7:20AM — We arrive. Early. Too early. Mark drives around the roundabout and empty parking lot, past an urology building, and a dialysis building, and an AAA. After five minutes of this, he parks.
7:25AM — Mark decides that the windshield is filthy and needs to be cleaned. He goes to the back of the car and gets some Windex and wipes. I am shamed into cleaning off the wipers.
7:30AM — I walk into the center. The receptionist is there and Very Awake. Since I am wearing The World’s Best Cat Shirt, we are instant friends and share cat stories.
7:40AM — in the ten years since I’ve been here last, they’ve switched from Versed and other twilight drugs to a sedative called Propofol.
“Oh man!” I say, “This is Eugene! How can I have a crystal vision if I’m knocked out?”
My new best cat friend (whose cat’s name is Alejandro) thinks this is pretty funny. Maybe I’ll fall into a wisdom dream.
7:45AM — The ward nurse calls me back before I have time to read more than a paragraph’s worth of Ada Palmer’s, “Inventing the Renaissance.” This is a Good Thing, as it prevents me from having to hunt down a lifestyle magazine with an article on meals in order to be taunted by (and tempted to lick) photographs of food. Not that I’m that hungry. Yet.
7:50AM — I’ve been inducted into a sick bay. I change into a medical patient’s smock and am tucked into a hospital bed with railings.
8:00AM — Somewhere around here I notice a paper stop sign taped to the ceiling instructing patients to call a nurse for help if they need to sit up, stand up, get dressed, go to the bathroom, or pretty much anything except lay in bed.
I suppose in an attempt to get me to nap, the nurse turns off the light, so it’s a bit dim. I briefly consider napping. My procedure isn’t for a while so I’ve got some time. But I want to keep a record of today’s events for posterity. Alas, my IV is in my right hand so I can’t write. I’m going to have to dictate into my phone instead of writing into my Book of Art.
Someone turns on an Eighties Station and quiet strains of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” plays. I keep expecting to hear David Bowie sing “Let’s Dance” like he did ten years ago, but this never happens.
—Oops, my phone is dictating the nurse’s induction to the patient next door.
8:20AM — just met with the doctor and the anesthesiologist so of course Christine Levine’s “Music To Operate By” is in my head (“Oh it must be great / to get to operate / on sensitive patients like me / who care about your / stupid, petty problems / that you should have left outside the door / because right now / all you should be focused on / is me me Me ME ME!”). I’m under the impression that they think I’ve got good blood pressure and heart rate for a sexagenarian.
8:30AM — a nurse stows away my glasses and phone. So I can’t write, dictate, or see. I get wheeled into the operation room.
“Do you get to wheel in patients every day?” I ask.
“No, we trade shifts and this is my day.”
“Cool, oh there’s the monitor; darn I was hoping to see it, but I can barely read the clock.” This really is too bad, as last time I got to see the folds of my colon, but there’s no way that’s happening this time.
“Okay,” says the anesthesiologist, “I’m going to put this oxygen feed on your nose. It might smell bad.”
“Probably not as bad as the Suprep,” I say.
“No, but it’s still a little plasticy,” the anesthesiologist says.
There’s a moment where my hair gets in the way of the left ear loop, but then it’s on. The plastic nose feed isn’t some giant, spiky pronged device that goes halfway up my sinuses, for which I am grateful.
“Okay,” says a different tech, who was a blonde haired blur, “I’m going to put this heart monitor on.”
“Cool, EKG?” I ask.
“Yes, one pad here. Another pad here—let me get your hair out of the way.” She hooks wires over the electrical contact stud sticking out of the adhesive pads. “And another one here.”
“Okay; which one’s ground?”
“Um,” —apparently, I’ve gone off script and this is an unexpected question—she points to the one on my arm. “That one.”
A series of instructions to lay on my side follows, and then I’m thinking the anesthesiologist is speaking to me.
“I’m sorry, what?” I ask.
“I’m repeating procedure to the doctor so he knows that I’ve started the propofol.”
“Oh. Right. Repeating thing’s the procedure.” If I had been thinking a little more clearly, I would have asked my favorite research question: “What things do books or movies get wrong that bug you the most?”
A new dimension subtly reveals its rotational axis.
“Hmm,” I say. “I think I can feel it working.”
(This is me, knocked out. Whoa, that was abrupt.)
9:00AM — A nurse’s voice calls me out of darkness. It might be more accurate to say that my name floats out of a sea of medical machineries’ clicks and beeps and brings my awareness to the surface.
I open my eyes. “Oh. My glasses are on my face. I can see.”
“Yes,” she says. “I handed them to you.” (Wow, The Void has that memory.) “How do you feel?”
“Okay….” Being able to see the wall clock in focus was not quite the crystal vision I was expecting, but I’ll take it. “Uh, I feel a little dizzy.” I’ve had worse spins with tequila. It does not occur to me at the time to start singing, “Give Me One Margarita,” which is probably for the best.
“Just rest for a few more minutes and I come back to see how you feel.”
I lean way over the bed rails and fish my phone out of my grab-and-go bag. The patient in the bay next to mine is wheeled back, coughing, and I am thankful I didn’t have an endoscopy. Or apnea.
The doctor appears with a packet of results: nothing super-serious, and I get to do this again in seven or ten years. He slips the packet into my bag and says goodbye.
9:15AM — Wow, underwear, pants, and shirt whipped out and on—and I’m whisked out to the patient pickup area faster than you can say diverticula. Okay, not quite fair… I did get debriefed on resting; not driving cars, doing yard work, drinking, or smoking marijuana; and walking/farting off any carbon dioxide they pumped into me during the procedure. The nurse handing me off to Mark says something about helping me in and out of the car.
“Wait, John. Let me come over and help you.”
“Oh,” I say, “I can get out of the car.”
Mark pretends to address my father: “Yes, Harry.”
Sigh. (Imitating my Ninety-Year-Old-Father As If He Were Speaking Face Down From Where He’s Fallen Onto The Floor): “I’m fine. I’m fine.” I let Mark help me up.
“The nurse did tell me to help you in and out of the car,” Mark says.
In the crosswalk, I realize that the street is maybe rotated a half-degree in that newly discovered dimension and is out of phase with my feet, and am extra thankful for Mark’s hand (which is also maybe in another dimension) in mine.
We play Word Scape on Mark’s phone while we have quiche and tea. I suppose playing a word game together in a cafe is Cute Old-Couple Behavior, but I use it as an opportunity to test that I can still form words out of random letter tiles.
Occasionally the room jumps a half-inch in a random direction. I’m going to guess this is caused by sudden head movements.
9:55AM — As we drive home, I still appear to be slightly loopy. Er, dizzy? Er, processing three-dimensional objects as if I were having a mini out-of-body experience: everything seems extra-solid and displaced by half a degree? I’m noticing that my lexical ability is impaired: mostly choosing the occasional wrong word or mispronouncing things like isopropanol alcohol. I sing “The Time Warp” under my breath: “It’s a slowed down sensation / like you’re under sedation!”
10:00AM — We achieve the driveway. I recite: “to sit in solemn silence on a dull dark dock in a pestilential prison with a lifelong lock, awaiting the sensation of a short sharp shock from a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block.“ Well… that mostly works. Granted, that still usually works after two margaritas, so it’s really not an accurate measure of Mexican impairment… er… *lexical* impairment.
10:15AM — Mark reminds me that I have already had two cups of tea at the cafe. I retire to the deck and the patio sectional couch with a banana and some lemonade and my grab-and-go bag.
The day passes with much less writing and reading than I expected, and much more napping.
I’m sure that farting is in my future.
Memento mori.