A Family Story

Another day, another flower. This is one of our peonies. We got varying results from the peonies this year -- the yellow intersectional peony went crazy and had more flowers than ever before, at least ten. The peony above has managed two blooms so far. And the "Bowl of Beauty," which did so well in previous years, has not a single flower or bud. You just never know.

I am in the middle of preparations for my colonoscopy, so needless to say I'm not going to work. I started last night, and the procedure is at 4 p.m. today so basically I have to sit around all day with an empty belly, which I'm not thrilled about. I'm taking Moviprep, the powdered drink mix "cleanse." It's not too terrible if you drink it quickly, but it makes me feel incredibly cold.

Anyway, I'll be glad when all this is over.

I know I seem paranoid about my gut health, but there's a reason: 

These are my paternal grandparents. I never knew my dad's father, who died at age 59 in 1964, a few years before I was born. And I barely knew my grandmother, because they lived in Riverside, California, all the way across the country from where I grew up. When I was a small child I went to California with my parents twice, but then my brother was born and my parents got divorced and my dad got remarried and there were step-siblings and everything was complicated, so we didn't go again until 1983, when I was 16. That's the only time I really met and talked to my grandmother as a semi-adult.

Anyway, people say I look like my grandfather, and I think that's true. I also think I have his body type, and I'll be 58 this year. So I am careful about gut health because of the way he died.

He was a mailman and a Boy Scout leader, and was generally very fit. He didn't drink, he wasn't overweight, he only smoked an occasional pipe (as opposed to cigarettes). So it was a surprise to everyone when he awoke one night in excruciating pain, an ambulance was called, and doctors discovered that his colon had spontaneously ruptured from undiagnosed colon cancer. He lived only a short time after that -- a matter of days, I think. He told my father he'd had no alarming symptoms -- no bleeding, no pain, no discernible weight loss. His only clue that something was amiss was that sometimes, on his mail route, he'd need to urgently find a bathroom -- and apparently that issue was never severe enough to raise a red flag.

Now, all of this is second-hand information from 60 years ago, and almost everyone who witnessed his death is now dead themselves. So who knows what really went on. But still! Scary!

To the best of my knowledge no one else in my family had colon cancer except my great-uncle on my mom's side, and that wasn't until he was a very old man. (And he beat it.) But I have had other family members with cancer, and of course my dad died from it -- though he smoked like a chimney and it was lung cancer, not colon.

So, yeah, I'm paranoid. I keep an eye on things.

I imagine I'll be lying around all day, reading and killing time. I had beef broth for dinner last night and I'll probably have beef broth for lunch today. Unlike my last colonoscopy, when I went out and bought Jell-O and ginger ale and some other stuff to see me through, this time I didn't prepare at all. So I'm just working with what we've got here at home. Clear liquids is the rule, until 2 p.m., after which I can't have anything at all.

Thank god I can still have black coffee this morning!