I wasn’t going to write this post as I thought I’d lose some dignity.  But then I realised after this week I have pretty much no dignity left and I couldn’t explain the couple of giggles I had without telling you the full story.  So…

….on Wednesday I had to go to hospital for a colonoscopy.  If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry – it will become quite obvious very shortly.  Having had a camera shoved down my throat into my tummy a few months back and having a pretty horrible time of it, I was a bit scared of this one.  It turns out there was no need.  The really bad bit was the preparation.

The hospital had kindly provided me with powders to make up two litres of laxatives which I had to drink three hours apart.  I can only describe it as Lemsip with added salt.  I can’t even drink Lemsip since I had flu years and years ago, so it proved to be a bit of a challenge.  I had two hours to drink each litre and the only thing I could do was to sit very, very still on my back door step while sipping slowly so I didn’t throw the whole lot up.

Two hours later I decided I must be a bit weird as nothing had happened.  2.5 hours later I discovered I should have enjoyed those moments of quiet as the magic quite definitely started.  (Now you might see why I was so intent on fixing my toilet in the last post).

The instructions had suggested that a ‘barrier cream might be beneficial’.  I didn’t really understand the concept, but after my 20^th dash to the toilet when I thought I may have caught fire, I wondered if olive oil might do the trick.  I didn’t have time to find out though.  I lost count on my 50^th trip to the toilet and just focussed on being grateful that I live in the teeniest house ever built as it at least I had a two minute sit down before the next mad dash.

By the time Wednesday morning arrived I felt like a wrung out dish cloth.  I was given a gown at the hospital, taken to a room and introduced to the staff who would be carrying out the procedure.  I would rather have been ignored and avoided eye contact, but that British spirit won out and I found myself shaking various hands.  Then it got even more surreal.  As I lay on my side on the bed, bottom exposed, telling myself that ‘they see this everyday’, the doctor decided it was a good time to strike up a conversation. ‘Ooooh, big birthday coming up!’ he said, looking at my date of birth on the screen which would soon be showing pictures of my colon.  I felt this wasn’t the time or place for small talk, and told him to ‘Shhhhh – it’s not until next year.’  And was promptly lulled into a lovely sedative fog (because no, you don’t go to sleep for this – you’re just sedated and positioned so you can see the screen as the camera winds its way around your insides….)

Anyway, it all went fine, I was given a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea as a reward and went home to sleep.

Unfortunately, my manager wanted me in the office the next day.  I wasn’t allowed to drive so he told me to get a taxi to the station.  All was fine and I was quite amazed to find myself in front of my desk at the usual time, typing away.  Only someone must have moved the keys around a little bit as my typing was ever so slightly off.  It made sense, but the words all changed around a bit.  Luckily I have a very understanding colleague who sanity checked everything I wrote and caught my mistakes, but by lunchtime I thought I was probably ok and posted something to the company intranet.  It was only when someone contacted me to question what I’d written that I realised the drugs were probably still in my system in some shape or form.  I had been asking people to ‘join a hub group’.  What I’d actually asked people to do was ‘join a group hug’.

:o)

There isn’t really an appropriate picture for this post, so here’s a pretty one from months ago