Walgreens Cashier Comments on Bowel Prep Supplies

Publish date: 2024-05-08

OP, every last last bit of inconvenience, embarrassment, humiliation, and indignity you may endure for the "prep" process and during the colonoscopy procedure itself is a walk in the park compared with having advanced colorectal cancer. Trust me.

Yes, 45 IS the new 50, as it should be. Sometime after age 48, I had the shits. Uncontrollable. Bloody. Felt like there was an alien up my ass somewhere, and it was growing. It would come and go. The incompetent gay doc on my shitty health plan (Kaiser) insisted I had an STD and did several rounds of antibiotics that lasted for months each. Meanwhile, my symptoms grew worse. It was grotesque, and I didn't want to talk about it, except with the doctors, who were dismissive.

Colon cancer was not on my radar. I knew nothing about it. Because I wasn't yet 50, it apparently wasn't on theirs. Was in agony -- sometimes spent weeks in bed, going to the toilet every half hour, despite that I stopped eating. At age 50, I got notice that I was due for a colonoscopy. They couldn't get the fucking camera up my rectum due to a blockage. That led to a CT scan which revealed that I now had a tumor the size of a "tangerine". I had advanced colorectal cancer with a metastasis to a kidney. A four-year odyssey, two colon resectionings, a colotomy bag for a year, then an ileostomy bag, a total of 4 major surgeries, and I survived (am almost 4 years out). Am lucky that they were eventually able to reconnect the guts. I had changed jobs, and found myself with profoundly better insurance and a better team of providers.

I'll never forget the embarrassment I felt about my first trip (which would become over a dozen) to Walgreen's in SF for bowel prep supplies. That was child's play.

At my lowest point in terms of desperation and humiliation, I had to lay on my side on some sort of giant x-ray table that looked like a dance floor from Hell in a room full of medical staff and observant med students with clipboards. while a cute, kind, silver daddy radiologist (clearly gay) was trying to shove a leaking barium enema up my ass with that painful tumor causing resistance. I was wearing a paper gown, which had basically torn away and dissolved. The radiologist said, "I'm sorry I'm causing pain". I said, "Look, I've dated truck drivers, let's git 'er done!". Some of the med students were stunned, while some were hiding their faces behind their clipboards, trying to hold back on choking to death with laughter. At that moment, I was cured of my shame.

Colorectal cancer is the third cause of cancer deaths in the US. It is so easily curable -- if detected early.

OP, wishing you good luck with your first colonoscopy!

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pa3TmqOorZ6csm%2BvzqZmraCimq6le5JqaXBsaGiBbsPApZ6rnZWjwG6vwKyfop2iYrCwucyepa2rXaS7bq7OsJylZaCnsrF50q6nqaSZmsA%3D