We've been trying to reach you about your body's extended warranty

I got a colonoscopy because I've reached the age at which the medical establishment is concerned about my health even before anything goes wrong.

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

I’m writing this in a commercial area adjacent to the campus of my alma mater, at a chain coffee shop just a few storefronts down from the independent shop I always used to go half a lifetime ago but which closed several years ago, looking across the street at a high rise apartment building on a lot that used to be a video rental store.

When did this happen? As this familiar place became unrecognizable, was it fast or slow? Maybe it was like Hemingway wrote in “The Sun Also Rises,” as one of his characters described the loss of wealth.

“Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.”

So yes, you could say that I’m feeling it.

Not old, but older.

There’s a difference, I already know – and will surely know as even more time passes. It’s not any one thing that dredges up this feeling — not something, but everything — and it’s not altogether unpleasant anyway.

But life and the bodies we inhabit have a way of humbling us, of reminding us that while aging is not perfectly linear it is nonetheless an arrow pointing in a clear direction. Markers along the way are undeniable, even if we would deny them.

I had to get a dental procedure recently that, while minor, was a sign of my teeth aging. I’ve started reading books about sleep and longevity.

And about a year and a half ago, I went in for a routine annual physical exam.

Everything was fine – cut down on caffeine, try to get the cholesterol down a little, nothing major – until my doctor casually mentioned that I was due for a colonoscopy.

I’m due for a what?

Unbeknownst to me, previously a younger man who had never given a second thought to needing the procedure, guidelines in 2021 changed to recommend males get their first screening at age 45 instead of 50. Now it was 2022, and I had turned 45 about six months prior to the appointment, so my doctor was not kidding me.

He said he would put in an order and that someone would give me a follow-up call to schedule the procedure. The call came, I’m sure. And I ignored it, I’m sure. I don’t actually remember. I just sort of forgot about it for a year until I had my next routine physical.

It was the same drill – work on those triglycerides, another pesky offshoot of stress and aging, but otherwise things look pretty good. And then the reminder: You really need to schedule that colonoscopy. It’s not urgent, but it is recommended for someone your age.

Fine. I can come to terms with this. I can allow myself to cross an imaginary threshold, into a world where my body is becoming fragile and needs to be handled with care.

I answered the phone call when it came, and scheduled my first colonoscopy for the end of September, which was a few months out at the time.

I didn’t really pay much attention to what it entailed. It was something I was supposed to do, it presumably would be mildly unpleasant, but it was still in the relatively distant future. There was a whole summer to not think about it.

Then I got some detailed instructions about a month before the date.

Once I started paying attention, I realized just how involved this was going to be. There was a whole list of foods I couldn’t eat starting seven days before the colonoscopy. There was a much lengthier and more detailed list of foods and drinks I needed to avoid starting three days out. And then there was the 24 hours before prep, which involved a clear liquid diet and even more instructions.

Stay near a toilet? Why would I need to stay near a toilet?

Five days out, I took our kids to see the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie (which is fantastic, by the way), and I mindlessly plowed through about half a bucket of popcorn without realizing that popcorn was one of the foods I was supposed to avoid at the one-week mark. I confessed my sin to a nurse checking in on me a couple days before the procedure, but thankfully she reassured me that everything should still be fine.

At the three-day mark there were still things I could eat, but they didn’t at all coincide with what I would normally eat. I went to Chipotle and wound up with a bowl of white rice, cheese and chicken breast, nothing else, after consulting my list. I even missed eating salad.

No disrespect, but imagine missing salad.

Soon enough I would even miss chicken, white toast, cheese and all the other utterly bland and mediocre things I was allowed to eat. At the 24-hour mark, it was just Gatorade, popsicles, Jell-O and a whole lot of nothing. I was miserable, but also feeling like a complete idiot for how miserable this was making me.

It shouldn’t have been that bad. But when you’ve lived your life without any surgeries or even a cavity, even an inconvenient but routine procedure hit me.

On the morning of the procedure, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. to drink the last bit of my pre-procedure concoction. I had somehow convinced myself that it was a good idea to work for a few hours from home before my wife and son accompanied me to the appointment.

I even left myself a little work to finish that afternoon – not really realizing that maybe I wouldn’t really be up for doing much after getting shot up with fentanyl and having a tube in my rear.

We dropped our two daughters off at school on the way to the appointment. My wife, who had the much better sense to take the day off so that she could haul me around and offer support, drove us to the sprawling medical center – also at my alma mater.

One of the first nurses who saw us asked what brought me in for a colonoscopy. I didn’t quite know how to respond, other than to say my primary care doctor had told me it was time because I had turned 45 (by the time of the appointment, I was actually almost 47).

She had looked at my wife and I, and presumably at the youngest of our three children, and couldn’t believe we were that old.

Looking young for your age, though, is of little use in the beating back of the years.

Soon enough the IV was in and the drugs were doing their thing. I was awake, and I thought I felt normal. My wife said I looked and acted like I was on vacation and had consumed some beers. A few minutes later, the scope was in, and the doctor was having a good look.

And a few minutes later, he was done. All was well, and I was free to go. We drove immediately to Chipotle, where this time I ordered everything I wanted.

It was all very routine, by the book, and I guess that’s the point of going and of what I’m trying to say.

I was happy it was over and was glad to know everything was fine, but it still seemed like the start of a new phase of life.

My body, like a car, has reached an age when things might just start to go wrong — where I will get calls about its extended warranty.

I’m of the age now where even if nothing is really going wrong, there is concern from others and the medical establishment in general that they could start to go wrong.

Certain things like exercise, good diet and paying attention to stress, mental health and emotional health can help us forestall the effects of aging, but nothing lasts forever.

It is smart to be in prevention mode and catch things with early screening, and yet its also jarring and humbling to realize you have entered that realm.

Where I’m working, the coffee is strong and consistent. Nobody needs the video store across the street any more, and everybody needs housing.

It’s not the same as the place I remember, but it will do. The caffeine is kicking in, with the adrenaline right behind it.

I guess I’ll settle for feeling it from time to time.

Not young, but younger.