Passion

People sometimes say that the last age-based American authorization—after being able to vote at 18 and buy alcohol at 21—is being able to rent a car at 25 (without extra insurance, anyway). They miss out on a later rite of passage: at age 45 health insurance will pay for a cancer-screening colonoscopy, once a decade.

The anesthesia used for a colonoscopy keeps the patient awake and responsive (cooperation is needed when sticking a camera up someone's butt), but the patient isn't able to form any memories for the duration. Since folks can't remember the actual experience of the procedure, the main thing they talk about is the preparation period, which requires making sure your whole digestive tract is clear enough to have a camera see the walls of your intestines. This involves a couple days on a low-fiber diet followed by a "clear liquids only" diet for a day and a half until the procedure. Starting the night before, the patient drinks medication mixed in Gatorade to accelerate the bowel movement process. So the main thing people remember about their colonoscopy is usually running to the toilet and sitting there while liquid poop shoots out their butthole.

I had a colonoscopy a decade ago when I was having mysterious issues swallowing and with acid reflux, so we were fishing around for any gastrointestinal trouble. I only recall a little of the liquid-poop experience. The main thing my long-term memory cached was feeling really weird about the fact that I was sitting up and talking in recovery and suddenly started forming memories again, like waking up without having been asleep. I also recall flying to Minnesota for a family reunion with a box of saltine crackers and a pound of lard. The reunion is famous for my dad's cousins making a huge amount of delicious food. And even though it's the upper midwest so it was probably low-fiber (they certainly don't use whole wheat for the pasta salad), the fact that certain foods seemed to mysteriously trigger symptoms and the likely presence of loads of milk products meant I was spreading lard on crackers while everyone else was eating the best of Norwegian-american cooking.

Now that I'm 46, I've got a routine colonoscopy today. With my swallowing problem solved, I was able to plan a much more enjoyable low-fiber diet. I hosted a birthday games party on Sunday, and made a big pot of chili with ingredients on the approved list: ground pork, wax beans, and carrots plus bell peppers and crushed tomatoes which weren't clearly excluded. Corn, onions, and (presumably) most beans were out, but it turned out quite delicious despite the untraditional mix. With good forward-thinking I opted for mild hatch chilis rather than any hot peppers :-) I also decided that birthday cake counts as low-fiber.

My day and a half of eating only clear liquids has been interesting. Monday night I was still digesting chili and barbecue, so I sipped Gatorade, chicken broth, and tropical Otter Pops while catching up on Burning Man email. I found it interesting that when I got up and wandered around I kept noticing all the snacks, with an almost-unconscious desire to reach into the bag and grab a pretzel or cracker. Snacking is a background process, and it felt unusual to keep blocking snackd from respawning.

After staying up way too late writing an email, I woke up at almost noon on Tuesday. I figured having only half a day out of bed was probably a reasonable way to avoid getting too hungry. Red and purple liquids are verboten, so my afternoon featured four cups of green or yellow Jell-O, plus water and a little apple juice. You can tell I'm 46 and not 4 or 6 because wow did my mouth feel overwhelmed by that sugar. Following that up with 28 ounces of Miralax Gatorade was pretty intense; a bottle of Gatorade on a hot road trip is refreshing, on an overhydrated stomach and a sugary tongue it's sickeningly sweet. For the "drink two 8-ounce cups of clear liquids" follow-up I went with warm water; I suppose all the sugar heightened my tongue's ability to notice the subtle tastes of city water.

One quirk of my body these days is that moving my back in a weird way can sometimes lead to an uncomfortably queasy feeling in my stomach and some acid reflux because my esophageal sphincter opens. My usual solution is to eat food until things settle down, either because my stomach has something to digest or because there's a piece of something blocking the sphincter. I was a little worried I wouldn't have this solution available during clear-liquids, but it only happened once and seemed to accept Gatorade as a solution.

Once in "liquid poop could come at short notice" mode, I decided to stay standing: I'd spent enough time on the toilet, and I didn't want my butt to be in a comfortable position in a chair for any sudden exits. I also decided to not start any tasks that would be difficult to suddenly break away from, so spent the evening and morning closing seven years worth of Chrome tabs on my work laptops so I can uncover any "oh, that's an interesting article I left open and should read later" tabs. I was reminded that I'd searched for some lyrics in March 2020 so I could write filk songs "I Just Touched My Face" (apologies to the Beatles) and following the Talking Heads' opening line "Home… is where I want to be." The early pandemic was too hectic to make time to actually write those songs, though, and by the time things settled down a joke about not touching your face was passé. I also realized that although I took a picture with some paracord in a hotel safe this July, I never did make a "Writing thread-safe code" meme.