Welcome to my first ever colonoscopy

Safe hands: “The build-up was much scarier than the actual procedure”

These see-through paper underpants are particularly attractive. Not. They cover no modesty. I do not enjoy showing my naked body to anyone anymore, husband included, but needs must. And now I’m wearing flimsy diaphanous bloomers that are not protecting anything like one’s dignity and a lovely young surgeon is about to talk to me. We have never met in person before. Only, previously, via Zoom.

It’s at vulnerable times like this I hope I’m not recognised. I’ve written about male gynaecologists in this column previously and it got quite the reaction; some of it decidedly brutal. This is a colorectal surgeon and I’m hoping there’s not too much chatter among the different medical fields. In health records I’m called by my proper first name, which is not the name on this page but a word of abruptness, disappointment and admonishment that my mother used whenever she was cross at me. Which is why I grew to hate it. Except now, when this name is useful because I do not want this surgeon to know who I am. Because he is about to insert a tube where the sun don’t shine.

He greets me. “So, written any books lately?” Welcome to my first ever colonoscopy.

With his simple query all veins seem to retract in horror, making it subsequently harder for the anaesthetist to find the channel for the elixir that will send me to sleep. “These little things, it’s like they just know what’s coming,” she joshes as if speaking directly to my naughty flinching veins.

I’m not smiling. The elderly lady beside me in the prep room had told the nurse she was quite frightened. I’m trying not to be. Don’t know what to expect. My only awareness is from the recent Ryan Reynolds video of his own colonoscopy, yet as he was put under the screen faded and we didn’t see anything of his actual procedure, which was disappointing. That was the bit I really wanted.

I’m in hospital for what the nurse breezily informs me is an “up and down”, after I struggle to pronounce the word gastroscopy. That is the down bit. Colonoscopy, the up bit. A pain under my lower right rib has troubled me for years and scans haven’t unearthed the problem. So now, after a year’s wait in the public system, I’m finally here.

Prep was watery and explosive. Need I say more. But I was determined to make the surgeon’s job as easy as possible so followed the instructions by the book for the preparatory internal cleansing. Two days of “white” foods (white bread, plain pasta and Rice Bubbles) then fasting the night before, then the big kahuna, the mixture that flushes your colon clean. Whoosh.

The build-up was much scarier than the actual procedure. I was positioned on my left side. Sedation was intravenous, through a cannula in the wrist; I was instructed to bite on a mouth guard then was out in an instant. While under, in a sleep of the most lovely deep, a thin, flexible instrument was inserted into my anus; another into my mouth. Images were transmitted to a nearby screen. The procedure took about half an hour and I was out of the hospital by 11am. Too easy, and worthwhile. Five polyps – precancerous lesions – were removed. The mysterious pain may possibly be musculoskeletal, from my appalling posture doing the thing I love most, which brings you this column each week – writing.

Ninety nine per cent of bowel cancer cases can be treated successfully if they’re detected early. My profusion of polyps mean I need another colonoscopy in a year’s time. No problem. The procedure is no big deal, not frightening at all. And what followed: an incredible lightness of being. From cleansing internally over several days, from relief that the dreaded task was finally done, and from the knowledge that there’s nothing, actually, to dread about the procedure at all – not even diaphanous underpants.