My First Colonoscopy

I  hope you enjoy the read

My First Colonoscopy

Well the big day has come and I am kind of excited, kind of not, a little bit of anxious, the prep is done my colon is hanging cleared out sign, and I am starving. I have my phone charged up and my old 3g with games on it too play. The weather was a cold snowy February and Mother Nature didn't get the note that I was going to the hospital today, it's freakin -15c and the winds were just a bitch, snow was on the ground and the trees were bare, and with my first step down the steps of the front porch I went for a little ride, as I went for this ride I was thinking ah crap I forgot to salt the stairs and I am about to bite it, thankfully I didn't bite it but it was close. I got into a semi warmed up car with a bit of heat, tossed the seat belt on and we were off, thankfully the road had been plowed the night before which made it nice and easy to get out. While being driven there my nerves started to get to me and I am thinking ok what is this going to be like, what is going to happen, am I just going to go in and get it done, can I watch? will something happen and I will be in Hospital for a while? Shit when I get a some food I want to eat. So the drive goes without a issue thankfully and I can see the hospital in the distance, as we drive along side of the hospital you can see the loading door and garbage drop boxes, the side of the building is covered in a red brick with a green roof and siding hanging over the edge creating shade over the delivery doors.  We turn into the hospital and you see a big sign on the left that says hospital and under the English, hospital spelled in French with a parking lot to the right of the entrance and straight ahead is a multi level parking garage. As I got dropped off at the Hospital drop off area I looked around and all you can see is windows around the front of the hospital.

I walk through the doors of the Hospital and see a sign, please turn your cell phone off.  Yah good luck with that, tests have proven that you don't need to turn them off and how would doctors be able to carry their cell phone around with it on and working if you needed to turn it off.  So good luck with that,  now mind you this hospital has thought of people like me and it is a total dead zone except for certain parts near the windows. I can just see me walking into a person's room saying; sorry person I don't know you and not here to visit but need to stand by your window to make a phone call and jump on twitter to update my status, but I hope all is good with you are you are out of here soon.  So walking into the hospital I look around and phones to my right and a ceiling of gold keys to my left with seats for people to talk and there it is Tim Hortons and as the smell of the coffee filled my nose and progressed into my lungs and then hit my blood all within about 30 seconds and I wanted a coffee so bad, it was almost like when I was smoking. As I passed Tim Hortons I am thinking yep I'll see you later and you will have a fresh pot ready for me. I keep walking down the hall almost hitting my head on the ceiling disadvantage to being tall, about 30 feet down the hall you can see the out patient room. I walk into the out patient room as I turn my head straight my eyes focus and there is it again, please take number, so we meet again machine, this time I have come prepared a with a little screw driver to undo you and with not that many people in the room I should be able to get away with it. I search through my pockets and nothing, I am thinking noooo, you have won round 2 machine, next time I will get you, this time I will bow down and take one of your numbers but not without a hitch and I elbowed the machine as I passed it, only injuring my elbow and making all of 5 people and about 3 nurses focus all there attention on me, take a number machine 3 me 0.  I barley have enough time to sit down, and my number was called.  This time it was different and I had a nurse that was a bitch and gave me a hard time.  She took my info and took her sweet time to enter everything, name, number, address, doctor, she proceeded to give me my nifty bracelet and paperwork for the next room but instead of saying nicely were to go she told me firmly were to go with pointing her index finger on her right hand forward and her voice.

So I entered the room and with some of the laxative still in me I needed to find a bathroom quickly or my clothes were going to have to substitute as a toilet, yuck that would really make my day... uh nurse do you have any change of clothes I just shat myself.  I opened up the bathroom door and thankfully it was empty.  I got my pants off faster than Clint East Wood pulls out his gun at a duel. Flush ah much better I washed the hands then kept walking into the G.I. sweet. Same place as before with white walls and very abysmal, no cheer and allot of nothing going on. I went to the desk and gave over my paper work, it was the same nurse and thankfully she didn't remember me from what I could tell but I sure remembered her. She asked me my name, number, address, and do I have somebody to pick me up, I said yes and gave the number this time avoiding that is was my mom, I swear this time she was a little bit interested,  now mind you I was starving, tired and in not the best mood so I was definitely reading more into the situation than I should have been. This time there was no bed ready for me so I was told to go grab a seat. Grab a seat? Sure not a problem, I stroll into there so called waiting room which was a walk way with seats on one side and a wall on the other, with a double set of doors at the end of the hallway that leads to a hallway in the hospital, the walls were painted a form of lime-sh green  I look around and no tv nooooooo,  no maganiezes nooooooooooo, no tv and no magazines make me go something something... ? Then I remember my phone and thinking yes this sweet.  For some reason sitting here is like a magnet for people too stare at you,  I swear every person that walked through that area looked at me. So as I am playing some crosswords and time is ticking by I would say about 30 minutes have passed and my name gets called,  I am thinking yep ok time to go in, but yah, no, you think I would have learned this by now, they called me because they have a bed for me except this time it was the end room and I got the window seat, Yes!  As I walked to the bed I asked the nurse how long the wait time is but she didn't know exactly and didn't want to give me a number just in case she was wrong. As I walked into the area with  the bed I was very pleased that I got the window view as last time I saw it and really wanted that view. The nurse followed me in and told me to put on the hospital gowns and take everything off expect for my undershirt. As the nurse pulled the drapes across my now new home for the next hour or so. I get dressed into the very fashionable hospital gown and laid down in the bed, got my position right and pillow right and about 10 minutes later a nurse came up to me and hooked up a i.v. prep then checked all my paper work and got me to sign it, ah man I have to get up to do that and I just got comfy that sucks. So I am lying in the bed my stomach has gone on strike and my brain is begging me for something to do. Then a huge amount of pain hits and I almost call over the nurse but was able to avoid it. Between my games of crossword, Tetris and looking out the window I lost track of time.  As I looked at the clock I was shocked a hour had already gone by. I started to think hmm I wonder if I am next, then think hey wait a minute the nurse hasn't been by in a while to check up on me. Then out of the corner of the drapes I see a person being wheeled out and then see the nurse get some new paper work and hear the guy in the corner there, There are two different corners in the waiting room so seeing her walking towards me was a relief and I started to get excited.

I get wheeled through the corridor and get put into the same room that I had my scope in and trust me that is still fresh on my mind even tho it is about 2 years later, and as I get turned around I see the back of a nurse that is setting up everything for the procedure, as she turns around I am thinking no fucken way you have to be kidding me,  it's the same nurse I had for my scope, and my little buddy remembers that all too well. This time I told my little buddy nothing is going to happen and I will chop you off if you even move, I know idle threat but it worked at the time.  So she started to ask me my name and procedure and then she said wait have you been here before, oh no does she remember what happened will I always been remembered as that guy?  Wait no I can't be I was able to stop it from happening.  Then she asks did you have a scope here before?  Phew! I answers yes I did have a scope here before and then we get to chatting,  this time I took a better look at the equipment that was going to be inserted inside of me. Then looked around at the machine and caught her eye, I tried to keep my heart rate down but I am pretty sure that she must have seen it increase and then started talking with me. But this time I swear she was flirting with me, thankfully my little buddy didn't take notice right away and within a couple minutes my G.I. walked in.  I didn't remind him of what happened last time.  I was told to lie on my side and listened to the doctor say that I she needed to use a lot of stuff to make me sleep. I watched her put something into a needle, as she was putting the needle into the i.v. hole I felt something that I never thought I would ever feel and boom I was out. I awoke to my doctor saying my name and showing my inflammation which was pretty cool too see. the G.I. was explaining that it was either damage from the c-diff or Crohn's disease and he said it looks like Crohn's disease my heart sank I just wanted to break into tears.  And that was it for my procedure and as I was wheeled back I was a defeated person and in a really bad place for the next couple days.  I talked to a nurse about it and told her and she said it's one of two things, but with the pain I was having I knew it was Crohn's disease.  I was lying in the bed and couldn't believe what I had just seen or what I was told, then the tears started to flow, I guess I passed back out and was woken by the original nurse that gave me my bed, about half hour later I was out of there,  I never did stop for that coffee I really wasn't in the mood for anything after that.  It took me about a hour or so to be able to eat anything after the news.

There is more to come, the day of the diagnoses and drugs lots of drugs.

Thanks for reading and letting me share a big point in my life

Shane