Bottom’s up!

When I experienced my first colonoscopy in 2012, saying ”bottom’s up” beforehand was laugh out loud funny.

Ten years later it still is, but my bottom doesn’t go up. There is no turning onto my left side to prepare for back door entry of the colonoscope.

Rather, I remain on my back as the scope is snaked through my stoma, the bit of colon that has been punched through my abdomen to allow for the exit of waste from my body.

For those who have not followed along or are new here, I have pooped into a plastic bag attached to my abdomen since Friday, August 10, 2012, a day that shall live in infamy.

I had to repeatedly reiterate this fact during my most recent colonoscopy.

I would have thought such important information would have been somewhere on my chart, since this wasn’t my first experience.

Mind you, I’m not really complaining. The endoscopy center where I get scoped runs like a well-oiled machine. An assembly line with great patient care.

While not exactly outliers, I expect ostomy patients aren’t on the docket every day.

I left a clean colostomy pouch on my lap for everyone to see as a means of pointing out the obvious.

Still, the anesthesiologist walked through the left-side turn that would occur just before he started the Propofol nap.

“Well, no,” I said, starting to explain that cheeks to the right wasn’t going to work.

The nurse in the procedure suite finally asked, “are we going in through an ostomy?”

“Yes,” I said.

She asked if the tubing of a regular scope was going to get stuck. The exit point of my ostomy is tiny and doesn’t, how do you say, open to receive whatever may be shoved into it.

“In the past they’ve used pediatric scopes,” I said, which is what she needed to know to swap out the equipment she was preparing.

After the proper equipment was in place and the team was on the same page, my doctor walked in.

He greeted me by name, expressed joy that it had been 10 years since the first and worst colonoscopy of my life; the one where he told me I had rectal cancer.

At age 43.

During Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month.

While I was working for the American Cancer Society.

“How’s your health?” he asked.

“Pretty good all things considered,” I said, thinking about but not listing the bevy of side effects from treatment and ailments of age.

Then it was time to get on with it. The anesthesiologist injected the milky Propofol into the intravenous tube stuck in my right arm. My body flooded with warmth and things went dark. I was out.

The nap is the best part. Deep sleep for 20 minutes is totally worth the prep, which not for nothing was the easiest it has ever been. Twelve pills and a few glasses of water twice in the 14 hours before being snaked.

Just pills and water. No gallon of nasty liquid that induces the gag reflex, or powder mixed with Gatorade.

“Stay near the toilet,” the prep kit instructions warn. ”You will experience diarrhea. This is normal.”

Prep with an ostomy makes the process even more exciting and fun. Still, I would do colonoscopy prep every day to never hear the words, ”you have cancer,” ever again.

Here’s where I drop in my colorectal cancer screening public service announcement: If you are age 45 or older, or colorectal cancer runs in your family, talk to your doctor about getting screened for colorectal cancer. I highly recommend a colonoscopy, but there are other tests. The best test for you is the one you’ll do.

I’ve had five colonoscopies now. During this last one, the doctor found a 5 mm polyp. Probably benign, but the tissue got sent off to pathology to make certain. Come back in five years.

Look at that, I buried the lede as we would say in journalism school.

Doc used a metal clip to close the tissue where the polyp was removed. I’ll pass it when the wound is healed. That’s a new experience to me.

I’m traveling next week to Springfield, Mo., for Fight Colorectal Cancer Ambassador Training and then on to Washington, DC, for American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network Leadership Summit and Lobby Day.

I kinda hope I set off metal detectors everywhere. I have a card that explains the clip. And, I’ll have the opportunity to evangelize about the importance of early detection and prevention.

“See, there’s this metal clip where a polyp used to be because I had a colonoscopy…”