After the colonoscopy

Well, I was going to post something here telling y'all about the events of the last day and a half, wherein I had my first full colonoscopy (apparently the sigmoidoscopy I had 12 years prior in New York was not as comprehensive a check), from the preparation ordeal of the day before to the somewhat drowsy aftermath. My plans changed for two reasons: 1) I'm not sure that even those who eagerly read my musings in this journal are ready to endure such intimate and potentially nauseating personal detail about my medical treatment; and 2) the Miami Herald's legendary humor columnist Dave Barry does just as accurate and far funnier a job of the matter here.

Proving yet again that he has the exceedingly rare gift of being able to make absolutely anything sound fiunny (even if only in retrospect), the author of books such as Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up tells us of his own experience with the procedure. It is amazingly like my own, down to the utter inability to remember anything between the moment of arriving in the procedure room and being hooked up to the monitor and the moment of awakening back in the changing area afterward with the doctor. I had thought the anaesthetic would take hold gradually, but it must have put me under in a snap. Thanks to my dear friend Robin Holly for pointing me to this column. (Dave is absolutely right; MoviPrep® is a pharmacological torture instrument that must never be allowed to fall into the hands of America's ever-growing roster of enemies.) The only major difference is that Dave probably didn't hear in his head Dennis Miller's rant from his old HBO show about extraterrestrials and UFOs ending with the request to alien visitors, "Please stay out of our asses, okay? There's nothing in our asses that will help save you and your dying planet!"

And while we're issuing notices of gratitude, let me publish to one and all my eternal debt to filkferengi, who was the first of several to answer my e-mail list call for volunteers to drive me to and from the clinic, and did so yesterday morning with promptness, patience and good humor, even donating to me her planned lunch of a turkey sandwich and grapes. She is graciousness and kindness personified. Thanks also to those others in the Atlanta Science Fiction Society and Middle-Earth Rocketry Council membership who called to offer help, on behalf of both myself and the far-away Songbird who ordinarily would have had to undertake this duty.

And for those of you who do wonder about the (no pun intended) end outcome of all this: The doctor found one and only one small, benign polyp, which was removed using what is called a "hot snare" technique. (If you really are that curious, you can read about it here.) He described the preparation as "excellent" and my colon itself as "very healthy." Most important of all were the last two words he uttered, which at that moment were the two loveliest in the English tongue to me: "no cancer." Given that I am about three years ahead of the age where having this procedure is normally recommended, and colorectal cancer being a leading killer in this country, this was an immense relief. The abdominal pain which precipitated his ordering the work was judged to be caused by stress and an abnormal crease in the intestinal wall, brought about by pressure from digested material inside.

Dave's column ends with his urging to all readers age 50 and over who have not undergone this procedure not to put it off out of fear as he did. I add my own beseechment to you to do so. Yes, it is possible to have a clear colonoscopy at 50 and another years later that turns up cancer or something else; but the best hope of successful treatment is still early detection, the sooner the better. As with HIV/AIDS, it is still far, far better to know than not know. And as a bonus, you get this free PDF certificate from Dave showing that you were a Grownup and did the right thing for your colorectal health.

Catching up on the LJ birthdays (again)

Happy birthday today to a dearly missed friend, voiceofkiki!

And belated best wishes for those I missed the last couple of weeks:

• aiglet and erinwrites (Aug. 15th)
• mscongeniality, kiltedwitch and lemmozine (17th)
• mnemex (21st)
• odiesdee (22nd)
• wolfette and cflute (24th)
• davidkevin (26th)
• egoldberg (27th, yesterday)
  

I hope you all had absolutely faboo birthdays.

On MLK, Glenn Beck and today's anniversary

Forty-seven years ago today, when I was still an infant barely three months old—and three months before the nation's first Roman Catholic President would be struck down in Dallas, Texas by an assassin's bullet—the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. gave this speech on the steps of the Abraham Lincoln Memorial on a sweltering late-summer Wednesday in Washington, DC. The speech was to become one of the most historically important ever given, ranking with Lincoln's address at Gettysburg and that aforementioned Catholic President's inaugural address ("Ask not...").

Today, on that same set of steps, conservative TV commentator Glenn Beck is holding what he calls a "Restoring Honor" rally which is being widely criticized as an attempt to co-opt King's aura of historic inevitability for a cause some see as antithetical to that which King championed. A counter-rally organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton will also be held nearby today.

The First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and of peaceable assembly apply to both, and I condemn any attempt to silence speakers at either rally in the strongest possible terms. The way to respond to speech you don't like is never, ever to try shouting the speaker down, but to respond with speech of your own. I think spreading the sound and the text of King's original words is the best possible response to anything Beck or his friends spout in front of Abe's statue today...second, of course, to actually taking action at the voting booth or in peaceful activism.

We are still demonstrably far from the final, full achievement of making Dr. King's dream a reality. But progress has been made...and will continue to be made long after the words spoken on Beck's podium today fade into forgotten history.