What's a colonoscopy like?

Just like an old car, a person gets to a certain age when things start to show signs of wear. Wrinkles, grey hair, those cold mornings when it's hard to bend over far enough to put your socks on.

Today I had a colonoscopy. My doctor suggested it because of my age (approaching 50) and because my old man has had colon issues in the past. I wondered what it was like, but the instructions from my doctor were strictly clinical (insert tab A into slot B). I didn't learn much from my friends and colleagues because it seems most people are reluctant to talk about anything going up the arse. Except nurses. Nurses love to talk about anything and everything that has to do with the body. Especially at lunch. I like nurses.

Here's what happened. Yesterday at 8:00 a.m. I had to stop eating solids. I was allowed clear fluids so I survived the day sipping apple juice and whisky*. I also had to take drugs to get my bowels moving so that the house would be clean when company arrived the next day. My doc prescribed 20 mg of Dulcolax in the a.m. and then 2 tablespoons of Milk of Magnesia per hour until the bottle was gone. By the end of the night, it felt like I was peeing acid out my butt as my innards cleared themselves of the food I had consumed the day before. Vaseline is your friend when this happens. Use it liberally after each bowel movement to soothe and protect that tender tissue from the constant stream of partially digested stomach acid. Burning ring of fire indeed.

Hunger. I've never really been hungry before. Not like this. And after a while it wasn't so bad. Not pleasant, but not so bad either. In fact, we should probably all go hungry once in a while just to appreciate the abundant world we live in. I'm so lucky to have been born at this time in history in this place on our planet. What must it be like to go hungry for more than a day? To grow up hungry? To die from starvation? I had a patient recently who suffered a stroke that shorted out her swallowing circuits and because she had stated before that she didn't want any kind of tube feeding, she was allowed to starve to death. It took her six weeks to die with nothing to sustain her except IV fluids and opiates.

I was only hungry for one day and once the initial headache passed I was fine. I hunckered down in my Lay-Zed Boy chair (that's what we call them in Canada) with books and a movie and by this morning (24 hours without solid food) I felt pretty good. I've come to the conclusion that one day fasting is not REAL hunger. Six weeks is real hunger. Watching your child die from malnutrition. That's real hunger. I need to think more about my hunger. I'm getting pretty soft around the middle. I could probably do with a lower calorie diet. And I could probably do something to help those who are truly hungry.

I showed up at the hospital at my appointed time, no line ups, gave the distracted lady my ID and healthcare number (I'm also fortunate to have been born in a country with universal health care), and within minutes I was kissing my wife goodbye and stripping down to my black socks and a drafty gown to wait for the procedure. I had about 90 minutes to drowse, consider my almost public nudity under that nearly transparent gown, and listen to the conversations around me. The fellow in the next booth was in for a broncoscopy because his doctor had seen something suspicious on his chest x-ray. I could hear the fear in his voice: breathy and hoarse from non-stop coughing and years of smoking and tentative in the way he answered the nurse's questions about past surgeries and medications as if he was carefully completing a test, the result of which might influence whether he would live or die.

I also listened to the nurses chatting amongst themselves about banal things. How we spoil our kids nowadays with overloaded Easter baskets. "I used to get one chocolate bunny every Easter. That was it. No money, no DVDs, no clothing, just a big hollow bunny. Kids today are spoiled rotten." Another nurse talked about how her 4-year old daughter insisted on having her beautiful curls straightened out every morning before school and would cry bloody murder if she didn't get her way.

Eventually my turn with the doctor came. My IV was already in place. It stung a little going in and then I forgot it was there. Diane was the first one to introduce herself and chat a little as she rolled me to the endoscopy suite. It was cold in that room. Full blast air conditioning, sterile instruments, and a doctor who asked just the basic questions and otherwise studied a computer screen. A resident worked the scope. I asked the nurse to put the monitor by my eyes so I could watch the procedure. She said, "sure, if you can stay awake." Then she shot me up with Fentanyl for pain (Demerol is too hard to get these days), Buscopan to relax any muscle spasms, and a third drug that I don't remember. It was probably a med for calming the mind. I felt a little high almost instantly, but not at all drowsy. So I watched the show.

My innards are complicated looked at from the inside: pinkish flesh, some pooling of brackish yellow fluid, lots of folds and ridges, and a smooth shininess. I didn't feel much discomfort at the back door as the scope was inserted, but I did feel some poking around in my guts as it shoved itself around corners. I didn't see what the scope looked like, but it had a camera, lights, and a little grabber that reached out to snip off samples of tissue for analysis. If I was to imagine what the device looked like using movie images, the scope would be like the snaky eyeball thing that came down into the cellar looking for Tom Cruise and his daughter in War of the Worlds, but smaller. And the grabber was kind of like the scary snapping mouth thing that jumps out of the dripping jaws of the aliens in Ridley Scott's movie, Alien. But smaller and much less viscious. I'd love to have a look at the device. It must be beautiful in it's reliable, functional design. A great machine indeed.

And that was it. The anonymous resident pulled the scope out, wiped it with a rag for the next patient**, and the kind nurse rolled me out to recover from the drugs. Slam, bam, thank you ma'am.

I didn't really feel drowsy or sick after. 30 minutes and I was walking out the door on the arm of my dear wife. The half-hour wait was kind of fun because the doctor came and told me that he only saw the one polyp that he snipped out and an area of suspicious inflammation that he also took a sample of. He said I would hear from him in a couple weeks with results from the tissue sample tests. It's fun to hear that you don't have anything REALLY wrong with you, but it's more fun to be told that you have to push the gas out before you can go home. That's right, the doctor told me to fart. So I did. At first I tried to be discreet and pushed out some little brown mosquitos, but then (perhaps it was the medications lowering my inhibitions) I started to let her rip. I finally finished with a long juicy one that woke up my neighbor who was much more sedated that I. "What the hell," were his first words on waking.

And that was it. My dear wife took me to my favourite Vietnamese restaurant where I savoured every bite and then bought me a coffee. It didn't take much food to fill me up and I slept most of the two-hour drive home.

I kind of wish the drugs were better.

*Not true, I didn't drink any whisky.
**Also not true, they dipped the device in a big bottle of blue chemicals*** like they use with combs at the barber shop.
***The last lie of this story. I have no idea how they clean the scope between patients.

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The robin and the roaring engine

Why don't my kids need naps? Once they are up for the day they stay up until they are forced/coerced/bribed to go to bed. Not me. I love a good Saturday afternoon nap. Today, I slept so deeply in my big brown chair, that I woke up drooling. I dreamt I was walking around with my eyes closed, that is I couldn't open them, but no one around me seemed to notice or care. I was carrying on my daily routine with my eyes closed (Hello metaphor!). Next in my dream I was trying to rinse my mouth out with water because my tongue had stopped working and of course, I woke up drooling.

While I was unconscious, my children told me that they watched old Scooby Doo episodes on a retro cartoon station (Really? We need to keep seeing them?), they played Jenga (I remember crashing blocks), they read comics, and they scorffed down one of the baguettes I had made for supper (I'm glad they like my baking).

What could I have done in two hours? Did I really need all that sleep? Could I have finished the boring book I have on improving learning by incorporating body movement and moved on to the novel I'd much rather be reading? Could I have written this blog and then started fixing a short story that's been sitting around for months? Could I have taken worn the belts off my snow blower and run down to Canadian Tire to buy new ones? There are 10,000 things I could have done!

When I finally woke and wiped the spit from my beard, the boys were watching mud bogging on TV. In this "sport," a redneck man or woman buys a truck, puts a tall suspension on it, fat tires, a snorkel for the air intake, and then takes turns racing full throttle through a mud bog to see who will make it through fastest. Tires spin, mud flies, drunks slip on muddy inclines as they walk into the bush for a pee (yes, that part was televised), and those unmuffled engines roar like, like ... well, like unrestrained 8-cylinder American engines -- there is no simile for that! It's like trying to say what a robin is like. A robin is like a robin.

My inner 12-year old still loves the sound of a loud engine roaring fossil fuels through narrow, unbaffled pipes into the atmosphere. I wish I still had the energy and will to stay awake like my 12-year old self did when all that mattered was growing up so I could have my own jacked-up pickup truck. I want to spin my tires, pee in the bush, and drive home with so much mud on my metaphysical car that you can't tell what colour it is. And I want to shout and roar like a souped-up American V8, sending my voice up into the endless, blue empty sky.

Yeah, that's what I want.

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Soccer hooligans

One under each arm, June 2011


Ouch! Right where it counts, June 2011


Perfect boy, June 2011


Attention takes flight, June 2011


U6 tableau, June 2011


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I will be your beast of burden

Rescue, May 2011

Little one was too tired to walk another step. Before I knew it, his brother was schlepping him up the hill. Dear wife and I must be doing something right.

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Useless, beautiful

Reading "Breath" by Tim Winton. There's a lot of surfing in the novel. Winton reveres people who are able to do something so utterly impractical and yet so beautiful. I think we could debate whether beautiful acts are impractical or not (e.g., writing 1984, creating Twin Peaks, Goya, anything Gene Kelly did), but there is no denying the sublime beauty of art and marvelous physical acts.

Came across the ultimate in impractical this morning: Planking (and here). People lay face down (like a plank) in an unusual place and have a buddy photograph the scene. Pretty darn funny. I bet $10 it started in Australia.




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The sunshine visit

Never seen that before, May 2011


Tea Cottage shadow, May 2011


A nice table for my bubble tea, May 2011


To run like a boy is to be free, May 2011


Royal Alex under blue, May 2011


I can still whup you boy, May 2011


Just give me some sun and I'll be fine, May 2011

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A story of brownies

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The best way to get rid of something...

... is to embrace it.


I am grumpy, really!, March 2011


Trying the snow fort out for fit, March 2011


Snow down your back, March 2011


Too young to complain, March 2011

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Arcadian pause

We had to get out. More -30°C shoveling before bread and coffee. More wool socks and balaclavas. Griping fosterage of Lazarus one and Lazarus two; both would rather have kept dreaming than sit in the school house with other people (ugh!) and learn. Sigh.

But where to escape? The options are few in Eldorado: the farm supply store or the delusionally named Burger Palace. Irritaville, 30 minutes away, has a WalMart and a Boston Pizza. Good enough! Let's go. Now.


The cruelty of this display made my dear wife terrorize many
soles with a slash of her mighty bear claws, March 2011


A 1500 cal lunch made us feel better, March 2011


Arcadian pause, March 2011


We will survive, we will survive, March 2011

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I'm not complaining, really

It's 10:00 a.m. No rush to get up, February 2011


What are you smiling at?, February 2011


We're down to 1990 Ninja Turtle movies; provisions are running low, February 2011


Old-man winter get's the stink eye, February 2011

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How I survive

As soon as you're done, you have to start again, January 2011


I can't remember summer anymore, January 2011

It takes some special skill to survive and thrive in a northern climate. Here's how we do it in Eldorado.

Go outside
It's never too cold to go outside if you have the right clothes. Don't worry about fashion. I snagged a wire with my coat sleeve today. Feathers were seeping out like gravy from a burbling-hot chicken pie. I grabbed a square of duct tape and voila; looks like maybe I might be a homeless man, but that coat still keeps me warmer than tray full of butter-melting biscuits.

Snowblower heaven
I can't be bothered to look up who invented the snowblower, but I would be willing to bet 5 bucks that he has prevented more deaths from heart attack than all any low-fat diet. I love mine almost as much as my sleeping motorcycle. It's an awesome piece of machinery that leads me on wandering snow-flying journeys through the back yard. Just because I can. I would never shovel a path to the shed for God's sake, but with my little four-stroke thumper eating snow and spitting it out as if it were a holographic trick, I can create a garden path snow canyon with towering (if you get on your hands and knees) crevasse-ish blue-white walls.

Fleece everything
I own fleece socks, fleece long-johns (so much better than the old waffle kind we grew up with), fleece sweaters, fleece shirts, fleece jackets, neck warmers, mittens, touque, and I've got my eye on one of those scarfs that are fashionable now in climates where you don't really need a scarf, but I can't decide if I'll get laughed at or not (might be too gay for Eldorado).

Legal naps
No one can legally criticize you if you eat breakfast at 10, clean the dishes, and then as you scratch your rear, declare out loud "I think I'll take a nap before lunch."

High calorie meals
Oh this is the best times of year for eating. You need to eat hearty to survive the cold. Ideally, you are burning them off chopping wood, shoveling snow, and pushing bald-tired Monte Carlo's out of snowbanks, but if you're not, it's best to fatten up a little bit just in case you end up needing to do the above or if you happen to end up sliding your car into the ditch and have to spend the night huddled around your emergency candle. (Really? An emergency candle? If your only plan to survive a night in your car is a lilac scented candle, then you really should do some more research.)

An Eldorado meal plan:

breakfast: 4 slices of bacon, a country-style omlette fried in salt-free butter (have to watch out for the blood pressure), the last of summer's potatoes cut into small squares and fried with butter (the healthy kind) and sprinkled with sea salt (the healthy kind), dill, and cajun hot sauce, and as much toast with ginger marmalade as you need to feel full.

lunch: Breakfast was at 10, so you can survive on fruit, chips, leftovers, soup, cookies, cheese, sausage, and Christmas chocolates until supper.

supper: Largish burgers layered with as much stuff as you can cram between the meat and the bun (don't forget there are two sides to the meat); home fries with vinegar or gravy (if you had a physically vigorous day), beets or turnips or carrots (perfect in the winter), and apple crisp for dessert.

Vitamins and whisky and strong coffee
Don't forget any of these. Especially the vitamins. All in moderation. I take 5000 mg of vitamin D, 2000 of C, a hit of B every couple of days, fish oil (makes for good burps if you like fish), and whisky following your own rules for whisky consumption. I like a shot or two on Friday night after work. Coffee was invented for this time of year. The blacker the sky outside in the morning, the stronger your coffee needs to be. It's a balancing the universe kind of thing. Note: even though I pump myself full of vitamins, I still spent the last week sick in bed. Makes me question the expense of all those little pills. May be wise to stick with coffee and whisky (in moderation).

Movies and TV
There is not much to do on these long winter nights. Reading is great, but from time to time it is advisable to rest your eyes and your brain by watching TV. Sitcoms are awesome (laughter is important to keep you sane). And I loves me a good movie. The media stream into my eyes and ears is pretty constant, but these are some recent standouts:

• Don't Come Knocking: what happens when you question everything in your life and try to undo what can't be undone. Sam Shepard is the best.
  
• How I Met Your Mother: There's plenty to criticize about this show, but I don't. I love it. Clever scripts, good acting, and lots of laughs. This week, the ending made me cry.
  
• Father Ted: The Nazi priest episode makes me laugh at least 1 time per minute. Reminds me of Codco.

Well, that was kind of long. Broke my rule for length. Too bad, it's winter and there's nothing else to do right now.

Here's a little Codco. Takes a special sense of humour to get it. Special=insane.



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One more day

One more day of vacation. I've enjoyed sleeping in and waking up after the sun pushes up into my rare northern sky. Today, my drowsy family slept until 11:00 a.m. and even then we only got up because it was 11:00. You could sure tell the sinners on our block; the only ones with unshoveled walks at this time on a Sunday morning. Winter is for sleeping I say. And dreaming big dreams.


Eldorado sunrise, January 2011


You have to dig for it, January 2011


Five second glimpse of light, January 2011


Car!, January 2011


Beware of Trojan water valves, January 2011


When I grow up I want to be Geoffrey James, January 2011

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Used to be Edmonton Art Gallery

Now it's called the Art Gallery of Alberta. It's new this month. It's awesome.

We don't get much master work to look at in our small city of around a million. Lots of great art, but I've had to travel to Montreal or Toronto if I wanted see the stuff that fills the pages of my art history books. You people who live in Europe sure have it good!

The gallery's grand opening has given us the excuse to order in some master art.

The highlight for me was Goya's series of etching called "The Disasters of War," should be required study for anyone who thinks that war is a good thing. They are so sad, brutal really, and presented with such a ferocious honesty, it's a wonder Goya survived them. (Never mind the technical brilliance of many of these little compositions. I tried to imitate a Goya etching many years ago. It took me two months to finish and convinced me to stick with photography.)

One room over, I spent an hour looking at some Degas paintings. There were sculptures too, but they left me cold. The paintings though, damn!, that man could wield a brush. There was nothing holding him back, each stroke was a mindless as a branch in the wind and as perfect as a Basho poem.

It was the contemporary art that impressed my young boys most. A massive sound installation called The Murder of Crows blew us all away. 98 audio speakers, 98 tracks, one mind-expanding listening experience. A person could return to this exhibit 98 times and hear something different. Wow!

There's a pile more cool stuff. If you live near Edmonton, get yourself down to the new gallery. It's another reason to call Edmonton great.


aga, February 2010


Inside a sculpture, February 2010


Stop, notice the light, February 2010


Do you see the point? February 2010


Timing, February 2010


Timing too, February 2010


New neighbors/sliver of ochre light, February 2010


Eternity is an illusion, but the idea is still awesome, February 2010

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In the absence of light, part three

Time to wrap up this little series. The walk is done, the moving is still going (on beyond, ha ha).

This week, we heard that a house we fell in love with last September may be back on the market. The thing is, even though it is perfect and my heart can imagine living there for a long time, raising my family, healing our pains, becoming ... I've already given it up once. I'm not nearly so caught by it this time.

If it will be, it will be.

In the mean time, we'll be homeless in four weeks. Anyone have a trailer they want to lend us!?


A little snow on the little roof, February 2010


Reflecting on Lohwinkel, February 2010


Pull the lever and spring will appear, February 2010


Always ready, February 2010


Some things can't be stopped, not really, February 2010


Guardian trees, February 2010

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