Yeah.

I know you all do.

The prep…it was everything I imagined…and more…so much more that I could have never imagined. I do see very clearly why my doctor told me not to leave the house during prep day. Honey, I barely left a small part of the Big Top…except to drink that PEG prep liquid every 15 minutes seventeen times.

Thank goodness vodka is a clear liquid!

No, really. It is.

Between my, er, colon cleansing, my VERY empty, hungry belly, my nerves over the test the next morning and the volume of my clowns slumber, it was a long night…a very long night.

I DID voluntarily sign up for this. In all seriousness, I did because it is recommended for someone my age. Happy 50th birthday to me!

Morning came soon enough and after a stop at the donut shop for Jodie and dropping her off at school, my darling husband drove me to the hospital…loudly slurping his coffee. When you’ve been on a clear liquid diet since Monday night and NPO since Tuesday night you don’t enjoy hearing people slurp their coffee or stopping for donuts on the way to the hospital. Just sayin’. Yeah, I was grumpy. I make no excuses for that and my clowns know me too well to pretty much expect nothing less.

Soon enough I was in pre-op getting prepped in a pretty, pretty hospital gown with slippers just like the ones I wore when I had meningococcal meningitis. Hind sight is always 20/20 and I immediately saw that I should have got myself an Annie & Isabel creation for this adventure of mine…I mean it was a birthday gift to me. Next time.

As my nurse quickly slipped in an IV into my right hand, she told me how she and her husband actually had colonoscopies together…um, okay. I doubt my darling husband and I could have survived the prep together…even in a 3 bath Big Top.

With the IV running it was off to the OR where a lovely nurse and friendly anesthesiologist were waiting for me…and Dr. T. … I hope. Here is where I confess about the breakdown I had when I was 9 years old being prepped for eye surgery because the surgeon wasn’t in the OR and I was afraid the OR staff was going to start without him. I didn’t melt down this time.

The nurse got me, er, in the right position while the anesthesiologist questioned me about my latex allergy and the fact that I do live dangerously eating avocados…hey, I do have an Epi-pen. He injects a dose of versed followed by a dose of fentanyl and the next thing I remember…

Well, the next thing I remember is Zoë sitting next to me…HOURS later. Boy did she pick a great day to come home and bring her laundry for a visit! The rest of the day, and even parts of the evening that followed I can’t recall. Not at all.

Apparently I did have a conversation with my doctor after the procedure where he told me he saw a relatively healthy colon and the hemorrhoids I affectionately named Holly, Zoë, Abigael and Jodie. Hurray for a healthy colon! I also managed to get up and get myself dressed and into a wheelchair which is how my darling husband found me when he was called back to claim me. We stopped at Jack In The Box on the way home…to celebrate my healthy colon no doubt…and I ate something that had bacon in it. I do remember the bacon. Everything else, well, everything else is a lovely, fuzzy, cotton-y versed and fentanyl blur. If you really wonder what it is all about read Dave Barry’s account because it pretty much sums it up…at least what I can remember of it.

In all seriousness, I survived a relatively easy procedure… if you forgive the colon cleanse, the bruise left from the IV site, the gas that is passed and the versed-fentanyl haze that lasted the rest of the day. The good news is I received a healthy report and I don’t have to do that again in ten years or so.