Clean for a Day!

Well, I did it! I got through the screening everyone dreads. The cleansing that makes you starve for a day an a half and forces you to drink a gallon of what I now like to refer to as Gatorlax.

Lemonade will never taste the same to me again. Lemons should never have to affiliate with Gatorade. And the not eating, how much fun is that? I can get busy and forget to eat until the afternoon on a work day, but tell me I can't eat for 24 hrs, and I am starving at 6:00 am.

I chose to prep on Super Bowl Sunday, so every other minute a food commercial was staring me in the face, reminding me of how delicious pizza taste with a cold microbrew. I was sipping chicken broth at the time and for a moment I though I smelled garlic wafting from my cup. The mind plays terrible tricks on you. I stared at my dog watching her eat her breakfast and wondering if dog food would count as real food. They didn't say anything in the instructions about not eating kibble. But, I guess those little crunchy morsels might end up looking like polps, so I distracted myself with a mango flavoured popcycle.

 At hour number eight, my stomach started making noises that sound like the mating call of a Howler Monkey. Then the pounding of the 32 oz of liquid begins every ten minutes until you finish the bottle. You wait and then in a dramatic moment the cleaning begins. Run! Don't look back.

"Get out of the way," I scream at the dog who had decided to take a nap in front of the door between me and loo. Whew! Okay, I can do this!  So, I went to bed early, though the process continued. I fell asleep for an hour then I was up again for at 4:00am for round two of my very own Super Bowl.

Morning finally came, my sis-in-law arrived to pick me up. We chatted for a bit, and then my dog decided to throw up right before we headed out the door. Oh did I mention that I was having muscle pain in my hip, so grabbing the dog and getting her outside was not something I was going to be able to do without a good hip for leverage. My sis got ahold of the pup and got her outside. I was on my knees cleaning up the mess and wondering if this was a some indication of how the rest of my day was going to go.

We made it on time, though finding the clinic was also a fun adventure.  I guess they like to build digestive clinics off  the main roads, so that passers by aren't reminded every time they head to work that a screening is in their future. This one, of course, was buried behind a Starbucks and a Mexican restaurant, so again with the food references.

I registered and was escorted to my cubby where I was instructed to remove everything but my bra and put on a gown. "Please leave the back open,"Candy the surgical nurse told me. "Okay!" I said, "Didn't know you could close the back of a hospital gown. Why the bra stays on made me wonder, do
they think having breasts unencumbered might be a distraction to the doctor. Could they not see that my perky breasts could not possible hinder his efforts during the exam especially since he'd be working mostly at the other end?

The nurse came in and I told her my veins roll. She said not on my watch! She stabbed me with the needle, hooked me up to the IV, then off we went full tilt to the examination room. I told the doc to "please be kind to my behind" and then I was asked to count backwards from 100. So, I started 100, 9...

I woke up. It seemed that only a few minutes had passed. It was all over. Food, was the first thing on my mind. Didn't care about the results, didn't care about my back pain, didn't care that I had my boots on the wrong feet, just get me a waffle and coffee! I ate with voracious enthusiasm, savouring ever bite.  Then the bill came and after a brief review, I said, "$15.00 for one waffle, two eggs and coffee? Wow! Now that's a reeming I'll never forget."