On 7 July I had my second colonoscopy within 8 years. Supposedly I could have waited 10 years; however, the PA and I decided after a few words about the necessity of having it at all, to go ahead since I had initiated the doctor’s visit. I had no symptoms. I was being vigilant. After all, I want to be in the best possible health when I come to die.
The procedure went well, the nurses attended to me more than competently, things explained along the way. I associated to Soylent Green as I was being readied and “processed.” I had a choice of doctors and I went with a gastro man who had interned at Mount Sinai in the Bronx. Anyone trained there or in a New York hospital pays his or her dues. We chatted before the scoping about how he enjoyed New York pizza and he remarked that his 10 years in Manhattan was an experience he thought invaluable. And then the sand man put me to sleep.
I was roused from a sleep that was much like I imagine death to be like, complete non-existence. Ain’t bad. It is the leaving that is painful. The nurse said, to my displeasure, that 2 or 3 polyps were discovered and removed and that they would be biopsied. The doctor came by to tell me much the same and to call back on Thursday for the results. He did tell Jane that they looked benign but that if I had not attended to them they most likely would have turned cancerous. It was the randomness of the event, the circumstances by which I asked for this procedure that quite frankly shook me.
On Thursday i couldn’t get the results and was given a kind of run around which in hindsight was unavoidable; late Thursday the doctor’s assistant called to tell me that there were too many specimens to biopsy but on Friday morning she would call before noon to share the results. The perversity of waiting.
From Monday to Thursday I was unsettled, doing my drama queen material. I am writing this Thursday evening so I still don’t know. If it is not benign, what then? if it is benign, I need to report back next year, I believe the doctor told me. I don’t believe there is anything I can do to stop growing polyps. The nurse told me that some patients have a “farm” in their colon.
Quite frankly, I experienced fear, I am still experiencing fear, and there is nothing I can do except to feel it, which is unpalatable. I am less tense tonight and I don’t know why. I am not resigned to the results whatever they may be. I am not that kind of personality. I dwell in me in such situations. I am of an age that symptons and maladies will soon start showing up. I will be 68 on 23 July. I know a kind of paralysis comes over me –perhaps you, when one discovers such threats to the self. I had this occur when Rochelle was killed in an automobile accident. It is trauma that cannot, for the moment, be absorbed. I am trying to allay my anxiety, but trying to allay my anxiety is much like turning straw to gold, a fairy tale “reality.”
I have not had the will, and that is the word, to sit down to write this blog or any blog. The air of self flew out of me. I don’t know what the morrow will bring, but I do know I will now have to “watch” myself as if that is not what we all do all the time on levels unknown to us. The impending threat to self-existence is crucifying. I am not a person of equanimity; I am a high strung individual and a fighter, or I hope I am. The threat of a malignancy hovers this evening. I can only deal with it with reason and emotion, for there is nothing I can do to change the course of events. I am only a mere rudder. I’ll end here as I have no ending to come up with. I am in a sea of dread.
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