So I’ve got this new blog scene and nothing to scribe.  Hell, when I can instantly post pics of my colonoscopy prep to Facebook with a quick quip, who needs to blog? Map-girl suggested a San Francisco sequel, but who knows where this is going… I’m still coming off my Fentanyl & Versed cocktail mainlined before today’s um, probe. A little research indicates the side effects of Versed should have me in pretty normal writing condition, while those of Fentanyl are surely what some of you experience when reading:

  • Versed – confusion, amnesia and cognitive impairment
  • Fentanyl – anxiety, confusion, nausea and vomiting

In spite of Dave Barry’s hilarious description, there wasn’t much funny about my experience, although when the nice old lady at the front desk said, “the Endoscopy area is just down the hall to the right,” I smiled at whoever came up with that medical term.  As for the prep, it’s way overblown.  It was pretty simple for me.  Couple laxative pills Saturday night, three more Sunday at 2:00, then wait for an event.  Once that happens, you start drinking the “halflytely,” 8 ounces every 10 minutes until half a gallon is gone. Within an hour after that, shit started happening and was pretty much cleared up by 10:00. That’s it. No drama. Maybe some other people have trouble with the whole thing, but I think the real issue is that most people don’t want their asses probed with anything, so we use humor to relax our um, anxiety.

I didn’t have much worry, but as I laid on the gurney earlier today, a clock was straight ahead up about 7 feet on the wall, just above a boom box playing Boston’s classical station. Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” was calming, but the sudden, shaking movement of the second hand was not. I watched it for a while, making the climb from 6 to 12 and I wondered how many more ascents I had left. You know the cliché’s… like the ticking crocodile of J.M. Barrie chasing all of us. I watched every second of that thin red hand stroke its climb upward. As the red line reached the 12, my nurse said, “It’s time.” I smiled and thought, “Not yet. Not for me.”

So, the aftermath of that unforgettable weekend in San Francisco is that I want more of those. I want more of holding hands, walking, laughing and being made fun of. You do too. You want more of all the experiences that make your life worth living. Are you putting off some unpleasant checkup? Probe? Snapping rubber glove prostate exam? Pressed breast in a pizzelle iron?

Do it. “Time waits for no one.”