— पांच हजार तीन सौ इक्यावन —
Normally I would spend my lunch break today working on the draft of my thoughts on today's Oscar Nominations announcements—that'll have to wait until this evening. I have to tell you about Shobhit's colonoscopy!
Even though there's not a huge amount to tell. He had like three tiny polyps removed in the process, that's about the most exciting thing. Everything went totally fine, and even went faster than expected. After I dropped him off at Virginia Mason and returned home, he was still in the waiting room, and texted me that someone else had come out "really doozy"—he meant
woozy. It made us both think he might be the same when he got out—he had paperwork that was almost alarmist about it: do not drive after the procedure; do not make any major life decisions; etc.
When I did pick him up, however, he seemed about as normal as usual. He had even been texting me from the recovery room before he was brought back out to me, just as I was finding street parking half a block from Virginia Mason's Buck Pavilion building. (I paid 75 cents to park when dropping him off, then 75 cents again when I came back to pick him up. Highway robbery!)
At first Shobhit was thinking I would wait there for the duration of his procedure, scheduled for ninety minutes. I was like, I'm not doing that. This hospital is all of one mile from our condo; there was no reason for me not to go home to wait. I had been told, though, that I would likely get a call around 5:45 to come pick him up, after I had dropped him off for a 3:30 appointment. To my surprise, I got the call half an hour earlier than that, at 5:16. Apparently they hadn't even taken him back until about 4:15, so the procedure went not only well, but very quickly.
As did his recovery, evidently. Shobhit had texted that the woozy person he saw come out while waiting could barely walk, but Shobhit was easily walking on his own and fully alert when they brought him out for me, which they waited to do until I was there. I suppose he was slightly wired; that's the only thing I can possibly ascribe to whatever drugs they'd had him on. Well, that and his apparent lack of time perception: they had told him he had been in the recovery room for twenty minutes, and he thought it had been no more than five. Even the time it took him to read over the paperwork they gave him was longer than he felt it had been.
The biggest issue after heading home, of course, we just that he was extremely hungry: he hadn't been allowed to eat anything for the previous 24 hours. He had the rest of the leftover pho' and then even made himself a melted cheese sandwich. He had been pretty delighted by his temporary weight loss as the liquid he had to drink was cleaning him out the night before, but after his huge dinner his weight pretty much went right back to normal.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ इक्यावन —
— पांच हजार तीन सौ इक्यावन —
Shobhit pretty much immediately showed me the paperwork, which featured several photos of his colon and rectum, including photos of the three polyps. He joked about making one of the photos his Facebook profile pic. He would never actually do that, of course, but it cracked me up because if it were me, I might actually do something like that, and not many people would even be that shocked by it. If it were me, at minimum I would probably share the photos. Check out my colon, everybody!
Who the hell knows when I will also have to get a colonoscopy. I have a feeling it will be sooner than later, especially after I inevitably share with my doctor that my dad has prostate cancer. Shobhit is 49 and this was his first; I've never had one and I am 46, and everything I see online says screenings should start after age 45. I suppose the upside right now is that I've seen Shobhit go through the process and it showed plainly how harmless it is, aside from being fucking hungry for 24 hours during which you have to spend several hours shitting liquid. That's better than one day getting a too-late diagnoses for prostate or colorectal cancer, of course.
While Shobhit ate his pho', I made myself a veggie burger, which I had been craving. Burgers must pack a real caloric punch, as I have been skipping lunch for days and finding it an effective, steady-but-not-too-quick weight loss tactic, and yet my weight was up slightly this morning. Granted, it was only up by 0.3 lbs and I never had a BM yesterday, so my guess is it's just a tiny blip.
I made the quasi-mistake of looking up what my weight was just before the last trip to Australia, and it was 150 lbs. Holy shit! Getting back down that far, from my current 165 lbs, is likely a pipe dream. But, I'd still like to get as close to back to that as possible. I'm already down 6 lbs from 171 lbs on January 2, and at that rate maybe I'll be down to 159 or 158 by the time we go. I can live with that.
And I know, I shouldn’t obsess over weight, body positivity and blah blah blah, but my weight gain has always been very clearly and directly correlated to overeating, which I did a lot of over the holidays (and over the past three years, I guess). It's not just a "body type" issue for me, and I need to be more conscientious about my food intake. Okay, sure, I am also an unfortunate product of culturally conditioned body image issues, but that's pretty difficult to get out of, right? We can leave the healthier thinking to the next generation I guess.
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[posted 12:31 pm]
