Double Preparation

Double preparation It’s kind of scary when the doctor tells you to get a colonoscopy, not just because of your age, but because he saw a freckle in your eye. That may take some explanation. A regular eye exam showed a spot on my retina. The optician casually mentioned this type of spot might be cancerous. That’s a jolt to hear. I was really worried, and continued to worry until I saw another doctor and he told me it was benign – just a freckle that should be checked every year. Then he casually remarked I needed to get a colonoscopy since this type of spot was associated with colon polyps. I began to worry again. It’s a strange thing to be uncertain. It’s a reminder of our mortality, and most of us aren’t ready to get off the ride. In the second before the doctor says I’m okay I’m exactly the same as the second after. So why do I feel so much better just because the doctor says I’m okay? It’s a strange thing. We put our trust in doctors. We pay them to tell us how we are. We hope they will find a pill to fix what we are feeling, and when they tell us what to do, we usually do it. I’m not sure why we have such faith, but we do. Maybe it’s a placebo effect – we want to feel better, so we get checked out by a doctor, and then we feel better because we did something. Anything. Well, almost anything. There are other professionals we trust. Lawyers, judges, teachers, law enforcement, airline pilots and others are called professionals. What does the word mean? We “profess” we have a skill. Others believe in our “professions”. But we all know some people are better at their jobs than others. I once had a dentist who was not the best. I wound up getting all of the fillings he did replaced by someone else. I’ve been to another dentist who gave me enough laughing gas that I had an out-of-body experience and was floating in the corner of the room watching him work on me. But now I have a dentist I trust. How do we eventually find where we are comfortable? I’ve had opticians I trusted, but when one of them told me I had old eyes, he never saw me again. I was really impressed my current eye doctor found this freckle in my eye when others had missed it. I even kept going to him when he left to start his own practice. And why do they call it practice? I don’t want to be “practiced on”. I want my professionals to have practiced on someone else, and get to me when they have finished practicing and become an expert. We have a strange list of words we use to describe some of this practice. Aseptic – it means clean. A procedure – this usually involves removing a part of me. Prescription – here’s my best guess at what will fix you. Symptoms – another word for problems. Developments – something we didn’t expect to happen. Effects – usually something bad. Abberation – something really bad we didn’t expect to happen. It makes me stop and think about those who consider me a professional at what I do, and it’s a reminder to stop and think if I am doing things which are unprofessional, if I am undercutting the belief of others in what I do. It’s a good check-up for us to do on ourselves every once in a while. So when someone tells you to get ready for a colonoscopy, there are some interesting preparations. You get to be cleaned out, and I won’t go into the details. So I got the phone call and someone said to get ready, I got ready. I showed up at the hospital at the appointed time, and tried to find someone to give me a colonoscopy. It was a Saturday morning and the place was deserted. My wife and I wandered to the front of the hospital to see if anyone knew what was going on. Someone helped us figure out that no colonoscopies were performed on Saturdays, but I was welcome to come back on Monday to get one. Which meant another round of what is affectionately called “colonoscopy prep”. Yep. I had to do it again on Sunday to be ready for Monday. I was extra clean. The colonoscopy found no polyps, but I was told to come back in five years for another checkup. I’ve had the follow-up, and now I don’t have to go back for ten years. It was like a reprieve on a death sentence. If you’ve done a colonoscopy prep, you know what I mean. Especially if you’ve done it twice in a weekend.

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