8:40 a.m. Bee is trotting around the bed and creeping up on me, dipping her head close enough for a sniff but not close enough for me to reach out and touch her. Okay, girl, I’m getting up. There’s coffee in the kitchen and I’m ready to get this adventure started.

9:05 a.m. First sips of black coffee. Not too bad without oat milk. Todd is in the kitchen talking about carports and how he’s going to erect this addition to the driveway (something about sides, something something the fence – I don’t know and I’ve not had enough coffee for this yet). He’s been up since 6 because “the dogs never let me sleep.”

9:25 a.m. He’s on to showing me a Mustang for sale online that he’s considering buying for parts he needs for the convertible. What do I think? I mumble agreement with the economy of this versus buying new parts at billionaire prices.

9:40 a.m. Todd goes outside to clear the six inches of snow we got overnight. Good! That’ll keep him busy for the next hour.

11:30 a.m. I’ve made a to-do list of things to keep me busy while I don’t eat and not think about food and hunger. I keep adding things to it so I can cross them off and feel like I’ve done a lot today. Christmas cards, baking, basement floors, basement tree, scrapbook, ironing, tie rack, packages, laundry, bathrooms.

12:30 p.m. The mini loaves I’m baking for co-workers are in the oven. I did the ironing and hung all 47 ties (there are quite likely a couple more that have been misplaced in the bathroom, the dining room table, or in his car) on these new tie hangers I bought.  I’ve begun straightening up the main floor. I packaged up two Poshmark sales to be shipped out tomorrow. I’ve cleaned all the bathrooms. Yes, ALL the bathrooms, because even though there’s only two of us living here there’s at least two other people who come here that make use of the “other” bathrooms seldom used.

1:00 p.m. T-minus five hours to the intestinal apocalypse. Trying not to lose steam and now I’m hungry. I’ve made two bowls of Jello in the acceptable colors and I’m about to ravage the peach one. Following up with a cup of white tea whose caffeine I’m praying will take the edge off.

3:30 p.m. I’m trying not to watch the clock. Am I a weirdo if I am counting down these hours so I can get started?

5:50 p.m. It’s about to start. I baked everything I could. My list isn’t completely checked off but I have to be done now. I have read and re-read, and read again, the instructions from the doctor. This is not the same prep I had last time and I admit to being wary. Why mess with what already works? Todd very unhelpfully adds, you could have asked them for the same one.

6:00 p.m. I pour the brown bottle into the “mixing cup.” The liquid is crystal clear, like vodka – or clear nail polish. Add cool water to the line. Take my first sip. Oh GOD, this shit tastes like a combination of turpentine and nail polish remover. It hits the back of the throat and burns a whole. I have to “drink slowly,” they said, finishing it over the next 30 minutes.

“Use a straw,” if it helps. It does, and it doesn’t. I guess it’s preferable to having this poison touch your lips and your entire tongue, right? I’m trying to aim the straw at the back of my throat, but the bitter aftertaste will likely last longer than a cockroach in New York City. My entire being shudders with each breath I take after the sips. I have my 32oz water bottle at the ready for step two.

6:30 p.m. Thank the lord! I have finished this bottle and now I can drink water. Oh this water is the best thing I have ever tasted! There’s a hint of nausea nagging at the edges that I want desperately to ignore. The instructions mentioned what to do if nausea hits but I didn’t experience this last time and I am NOT going to allow myself to this time.

6:45 p.m. My stomach is gurgling like a hot spring, popping and growling like a dog guarding a bone. I drink some more water, oh glorious, delicious, cold water. I glance at the stack of books I plan to carry with me to the next stage at the very moment my intestines sound the alarm.

7:20 p.m. Holy shit! I shouldn’t say “shit,” should I? OMG that stuff works fast. I’m still drinking my 32 oz of water but the colon was not waiting more than 20 minutes after the prep. What IS this stuff? It’s like pouring paint stripper into your esophagus and it just runs right through like a waterfall out your ass, collecting what seems impossible along the way.

7:40 p.m. I haven’t eaten any solid food in twenty-four hours. How can there be anything left to pass??!

8:30 p.m. I’m now tentatively (and gingerly) sitting on the couch, staring at the television trying to meditate on my intestinal tract to determine if I can relax for a bit. For the first time in recent memory, I don’t trust my colon. It’s in God’s hands now. I feel a belch creeping along the incongruously lazy river of the upper GI.

8:35 p.m. The cramping! Why the hell am I cramping? Did I not eat enough yesterday to make this less painful? Belch! Ah…. Much better!

8:45 p.m. Todd joins me and I’m grateful he wasn’t nearby to hear the grotesque symphony coming from the bathroom. I’d like to preserve at least the semblance of a romance still intact. I inform him I plan to stay out here in the living room all night, since round two starts at 4:00 a.m. and I don’t want to disturb him (or wake him up with sounds that rival the Aberdeen Proving Grounds – which I don’t mention because, see aforementioned “romance”).

10:00 p.m. Todd goes to bed. I’ve had one or two trips to the bathroom since the initial atomic bomb landed but they weren’t scary like not-going-to-make-it-in-time scary. I can actually hear the trajectory of a fart moving through my intestines. I belch again, because why not?

11:00 p.m. I continue drinking water which leads to more peeing of course but thankfully my anus was spared from further destruction. The TV is off and I’m resting on the couch by the light of the Christmas tree and our fireplace, shivering under a large blanket (super big and soft and only $20 at Costco). Shuggie has joined me on the couch, curling up on my legs and I momentarily take stock of my internal sensations to determine if this is safe.

Apparently so. I scroll Facebook, which is nothing but ads and pages I don’t follow – as always. Facebook isn’t what it was when I first landed there sixteen years ago. I rarely see friends’ posts anymore, diluted as they are by all the random garbage Facebook has sold out to. I open up Reddit and scroll there. A woman with factitious disorder recently had a “cardiac arrest” and the entire sub dedicated to her is calling it her annual holiday admission and noting her accompanying new hashtag (#cardiacarrest) on Tik Tok.

Someone on the Rover sub complaining about a potential client questioning her overnight rates and how the client thinks the charge for an exotic bird should only be $5 a day because there’s nothing to do for the bird, really. Said he will only pay her $60 a day for three dogs, two cats, and the bird.

The AITAH sub is filled with people who literally cannot do a single thing without asking thousands of people whether they’re wrong or not. Much of the posts seem designed either by AI or specifically as rage bait because I’m reading these and oscillating between wanting to Reach Through the Screen to strangle the girl who wonders if she should continue her 7-months relationship (considering marriage) with a guy who never bought her a birthday/holiday gift, doesn’t take her anywhere, and plays video games whenever they’re together and closing the app altogether because the stories are just too ridiculous to be real.

12:40 a.m. T-minus three hours and twenty minutes to Round 2. Feeling a little tired, finally. Decide to set my alarm for 3:55 and try to fall asleep.

3:55 a.m. What is that sound?? Ahh, alarm on my Fitbit is vibrating and my phone is right behind it to bring reinforcements. I cannot believe I have to wake up now. I’m soo tired. BUT. This is it! I’m almost there.

4:00 a.m. Jesus Christ on a piece of toast this shit is horrible! The nausea reasserts itself as this venom slides down the back of my throat in slow motion because I have to make it last 30 minutes. I want to pound it like a shot but it IS sixteen ounces of pure, slightly-cut laxative on steroids and if it works as fast as it did at 6:00 I can’t imagine what would happen. Or I CAN, which is why I choose the path less… dangerous. Oh the irony!

4:30 a.m. I wish to God I could go back to sleep but we all know this is going to be impossible. I’m sitting on the toilet, with my asshole on fire, praying for “clear,” and waiting for this to end. The wainscoting Todd built still needs another sanding and coat of paint, but the wallpaper looks good. Maybe I should change the lightbulb in the light fixture before it starts blinking again?

6:30 a.m. Grateful to have survived the night, I shower and throw on some Christmas jammies for my outing at the endoscopy center. My gut is STILL gurgling in an alarming way that makes me wonder if there’s still more visits to the toilet in my very near future. I think my exit is properly traumatized and I don’t want to have to go again. Maybe I can hold it. I know this is wrong on every level.

7:30 a.m. We have arrived at the endoscopy center with a minute to spare, a small miracle considering Todd’s lack of urgency in the driveway this morning. He spent a second too long trying to connect Apple Carplay and I snapped at him.

Inside the patient area, there are multiple people in various stages of their procedure and Christmas carols playing overhead. I am momentarily triumphant that I was right when I argued with Mom’s assumption that “no one” is getting a colonoscopy during the Holidays.

The nurse goes over my forms and asks which prep I used – the white bottles or the brown bottles? Oh, so the white bottle WAS an option, eh? Brown, I said, and I DO NOT RECOMMEND. ZERO STARS.

I’ve donned the gown and IV inserted, waiting for – as the nurse says – “your neighbor to get back and then it’ll be your turn.” I sit quietly staring at my cuticles, occasionally glancing up at the nurses’ station where one woman is standing near the wall and our eyes meet for a second. What exactly is she doing?

I want to bite my cuticles but then imagine Dr. Mu with his probing camera discovering this remnant of cuticle up in there like an unidentified floating object and decide I’d rather not have to explain that. A new neighbor checks in on my left and I hear the nurse running down her medical history and medications, violating HIPAA jingle bells all the way.

This center is a well-oiled machine (sorry, maybe wrong choice of words). The efficiency with how they roll you in and roll you out is truly remarkable. I guess it’s easy when it’s all you do all day. Probably explains why everybody seems kind of ho-hum today. Not the happy-go-lucky, hey- I bet you’re hungry, what are going to eat for lunch? – chipper questions like last time.

(Mom: “of course not! They don’t want to be doing this during the holidays.” To which I responded, it’s their fucking job, mom. If they didn’t want to be doing it, they could do something else. Sheesh.)

The curtains stay open in this u-shaped patient holding area and so every few minutes somebody rolls by on their bed, out cold and still resting on their side. Family members coming back to recovering patients try to avert their eyes until they get to the right bay. Then my neighbor returned, as promised, and I felt a sudden wave of anxiety.

Dr. Mu stopped by to speak to me and I decided to ask if anybody has ever still had fluids in them? He asked if I felt I needed to go and after a split second where I heard the argument inside my head that I often have with myself when I have to pee but maybe it could wait, I said, uh, maybe I should. I would rather you did, he said.

It turned out to be a good idea even as I thought it was a bad idea to be walking around in just a gown I’m trying desperately to hold closed while the anesthesiologist carries the IV bag. Soon, I was back on the gurney and going for a ride. The doors swing open to a dim room with Justin Timberlake’s Cry Me a River playing overhead and all I can think is, what the shit? Am I shopping at Forever 21 or getting a colonoscopy? And then the lights went out.

TL:DR – had a colonoscopy. The before and after events documented are as mundane and expected and without surprises for anyone who has also had a colonoscopy. Went out to the tune of Justin Timberlake’s Cry Me A River and it’s been replaying in my head for the last six days.