This weekend is my birthday. I will be turning 34. Thirty four! When I was a kid I would have thought that 34 was the age most grandparents were. It just seems so…old. But you know what? I don’t feel a day over 21. I still feel young and think young (I can’t decide if that’s good or not). Especially since my body is starting to do the things that everyone’s does at some time or another – it’s aging.
Yep, this gray mare just ain’t what she used to be. If I sleep on my back for too long, my lower back aches. If I squat to pick something up off of the floor, it takes me considerably longer to stand up than it used to. If I don’t have a full 8 hours of sleep I pay for it dearly the next day. But the worst thing of all, the sign that I am no longer the teenager I feel like, is that my doctor prescribed fiber supplements. That means that once daily I am required to drink a tall glass of orange flavored Metamucil. And if I don’t? You don’t want to know what happens…
Which leads me to the most crazy, grown-up, I’m-not-a-kid-anymore example of all: next month I have to go in for a colonoscopy. Apparently they are not just for senior citizens. And once you are the patient who has to have said colonoscopy, it loses every ounce of humor that may have been associated with it prior to making the appointment for the procedure.
I’m not scared of the procedure itself, which goes a little something like this. No, no, that doesn’t scare me one bit especially considering I will be heavily sedated and/or totally knocked out. (Currently I am rooting for the latter.) What absolutely terrifies me, however, is the preparation for the procedure.
The day before I take a ride on the flying scope, I am required to drink no less than one full bottle of laxative accompanied by ten tiny little laxative pills. While reading the information packet on the prep, I actually came across a section that suggested I take some books, magazines and my iPod into the bathroom and prepare to just hang out there all day. Oh, and I have to maintain a clear liquid diet in the meanwhile. (Vodka is a clear liquid, isn’t it?)
I am mature enough to reason that this is for the best, and that I need to find out why I have the symptoms I have been having. I know that if there is something seriously wrong with me it is best to discover it now. But…but…I don’t wanna hafta! Thankfully my mom will be in town to drive me to and from my appointment and attempt to get me transported up the two flights of stairs into my waiting apartment. I only hope the drugs I am on won’t prompt me to say something inappropriate.
God bless him, my boyfriend offered to take care of me. I quickly blurted out a “no thanks!” and then more calmly told him that as much as I love him and as comfortable as I am with him, this is going to be a solid 6.7 on the embarassment richter scale. I could almost feel his relief over the phone.
None of this sounds like any fun at all. But now that I am an adult, and not the youthful spring chicken I once was, this is the responsible thing to do. This is where I am as an almost 34 year old; goin’ crazy, havin’ colonoscopies…the whole works! (Boy what I wouldn’t do to be 18 again!)
P.S. I am really really really not stoked about having a colonoscopy. Just for the record.
My Sperpis In Life 