Yesterday, I had a medical procedure called a colonoscophy that took four days to prepare and three hours to endure. The details of which I will not bore you with. I have to have one every so often and they are hell to endure. It is a examination of the colon and if it wasn't absolutely necessary, I would never go through with it. Because I have Celiac Disease, it is. Prior to the examination, I have to stop eating solid food and take distasteful substances so that the test can be done.
Because of the pure awfulness of the experience, it changes me to go through it. I have a before and after feeling of life itself. I have had major surgeries that I am hoping will not be repeated. Unfortunately, I will have this procedure in about three years; but not next year as I had feared. I was in better shape than I had expected so the yearly dread of this test is three years off instead of next year. I missed last year because I was in Korea.
It is hard to put into words what has changed for me. Maybe a new appreciation of being able to drink coffee in the morning or to just eat food when I am hungry. I did not really eat for several days at all. I lived on clear fruit juices and tea. I could not go anywhere as I needed to be close to a bathroom and the whole thing made my life very unpleasant. I realize that many people live this way all of the time. I was doing it to find out if I had any life threatening diseases or conditions and I didn't. Thank heavens.
I exist in a body that I have relatively little control over. I don't even know what is happening in my own bowels and have to suffer indignities to find out. It is a body I have been living in for well over half a century as my son tells me again and again. I know that it can betray me in an instant and send me into the next so like so many others before me I try very hard to find out what is happening below the skin. This is the body I live with day in and day out and I know so little about it and medicine still know so little about it as well.
It is bad enough that I deal with a mind that has secrets that it keeps from me. My body does as well. I love that saying I see on the Internet, WTF. Well, it applies to my mind and body. My spirit lives in a envelop, a yellow submarine if you will and it is a complete mystery. Then on top of that, I am living a life that is a mystery as well. Just when you think you have a handle on what is happening around you, life throws something completely unexpected. Then there is the final mystery that is lurking everywhere that will eventually get us. It is a wonder we hang on to this life although some of us don't.
Well, I enjoy waking up in the morning, laptop in my lap and reading the news, the latest conspiracy about President Obama and Tweets and Facebook, Emails and what have you. I like putting new wallpaper on the computer and drinking the coffee and looking out the window at the rain clouds that are moving swiftly across the sky and the occasional flock of birds that flies with the wind. I am alive today. Some day, I won't be as everyone out there won't be. That's a bummer. Still, I survived another colonoscophy and I have a reprieve for three years and it does feel like I cleaned the windows of my life at least for now.
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