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Saturday, May 21, 2005 

I need another weekend to recover from this one

I had the test done this morning, and it was one of the less enjoyable moments of my life. I'm torn between wanting to share the story, which really is kind of funny, and wanting to be somewhat discreet and not disgusting. (throwing caution to the wind - beware) So I had a colonoscopy. That means that my colon had to be empty. THAT means I had to take medicine to empty my colon, and, as you can infer, that means I spent the majority of last night in the bathroom. This was unpleasant enough, but the medicine itself gave me a feeling like car-sickness, which is really not fun either. They seemed to not time everything right either. I had to take a dose of the medicine last night at 7:00, then the last dose at 5:00 this morning. When I had to leave for the doctor's office at 9:15 this morning, it seems that I was not as empty as I would have liked to be, seeing that I had to spend the next thirty minutes closed up in a cab. Ah well, I made it there. Then I changed into scrubs with a strategically placed hole on the backside for access purposes. The scrubs were too short, and not that I should have been feeling modest given what was about to happen...it was just awkward. They took me into the procedure room, June (yet another delightful, wonderful, and selflessly helpful Korean teacher from my school) following and translating the instructions for me. They had to give me the injection to make me go to sleep and couldn't find a vein, so they ended up giving it to be in one of my knuckles. I got dizzy, and June said that I'd fall asleep and they'd do the test, and I'd wake up in an hour. They sent June and Kylie (who came for the moral support) out to the waiting room. I was seriously toying with the idea of going to sleep when the doctor came in. I hope you can imagine my surprise when he began the procedure. There I was, wide-awake, not even dizzy in the slightest anymore, and he was just indifferent to this. I spent the entire time crying, and kept on saying (through my rather pathetic tears) "Why am I awake? I'm not supposed to be awake. Why am I awake??" which they, of course, could not understand. It was one of the longest 15 minutes of my life, let me just tell you. Aside from the obviously foreign and unwelcome presence of the scope in my colon, they have to put air in, so that the scope can see the walls of your colon. It was then I realized that I've never truly known what it means to be bloated. You know, I won't even say much more. But the whole experience was really rather wretched. And of course (thankfully) they found nothing wrong, the doctor diagnosed me with IBS (again), made a joke about how sensitive and nervous I was during the procedure (through June) and it was all I could do not to knock the fashionable and over-priced rimless glasses off his smug Korean face. I thought of many a witty and clever come-back, but didn't think June would actually translate them for me if I said them (she's a very kind person) and wanted nothing more than to be back in my bed at that moment. So I came home, ate some soup (graciously supplied from Kylie and Donovan's apartment), and went to bed, where I slept soundly for four or five hours. The rest of the day has been quite restful and enjoyable, but not in such a way that makes me forget about this morning. I have high hopes that tomorrow will be wonderful, and really I have every reason to know that there will be nothing inserted in my colon tomorrow, so for that reason alone, it will be a perfect day. Off to bed again...

Hey, at least things are looking up-you can be pretty sure that whatever happens tomorrow is going to pale in comparison to today. Here's wishing you a plain, boring, ordinary, nothing-on-TV-so-I-think-I'll-take-a-nap kind of day. Love you!

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