PSA or TMI?

Inner beauty

Public service announcement or too much information?  You decide…  I’m going out on a limb here, gonna disclose all my HPI and talk about something some, no most, people won’t talk about.  Medical tests.  Specifically gross, painful, disgusting and torturous tests.  Yeah, the dreaded colonoscopy… Which is surprisingly not painful in the least.
It all began with my annual physical.  These days, you must have a pre-physical before you have the real physical.  Meaning you have to go in, get a set of appointments for various tests, have the tests done, get the results, THEN go for the actual physical.  I called my daughter Crys when I left the doctor’s office for a little bit of sympathy and told her that I had to get a mammogram, a bone density test AND a colonoscopy done.  She really put it into perspective when she immediately said “Ok Mom, you’re gonna get your boobs squished, your bones felt up and a thingamajig shoved up your rear… sounds like another Friday night to me.”  ?!?!?!?!  I definitely felt better after that.
I scheduled all the tests (missing a day and a half of work) and fortunately everything is great.  Had half a pint of blood drawn, boobs definitely got squished to hell and back ( and by the way, I’ll take a colonoscopy over a mammogram any day!).  Had my bones radiated and the likelihood of breaking my hip is very unlikely and the colon is nice and pretty as far as colons go.  Kinda makes me wonder what an ugly one looks like.
On a serious note, as unmentionable as we think colonoscopies are, we really do need to mention it.  I was like most of you on the subject, “No way in hell!” until I had a friend go through colon cancer.  After hearing her stories and seeing the agony she went through, I couldn’t run fast enough to the doctor.  Folks, it isn’t that bad.  Admittedly the prep for it is not a walk in the park.  Four Ducolax tablets and 64 ounces of Miralax is tough to do, three hours of paying homage to the porcelain god and its over and the procedure itself, you never know it happens.  Seriously, you take a twenty minute nap, induced by, quite frankly, some of the best drugs I could imagine and that’s it.  So man up people, go do it.  Save yourself the horror that colon cancer is.  Get screened and spread the word.  It really isn’t unmentionable and you can save a life.
Just look at it as another Friday night and you’ll be fine.
Much love to ya…