Some Other Time

I told my sister that my doctor wanted me to get a colonoscopy and she warned me not to do it, because her husband had one and he got an infection right after that and ended up losing a foot of his colon.  My sister told me to ask my doctor if I could just get the Cologuard kit in place of the procedure.  My brother-in-laws surgery scared me and when I had my doctor’s appointment, I told her why I didn’t get the procedure done that she wanted me to have.  She said that the Cologuard test is not as effective as the colonoscopy, because it can only detect blood in your stool and it would not be able examine for any abnormalities like irritated and swollen tissue, ulcers, polyps, and cancer, but she understood my apprehensions, and she reluctantly ordered the kit for me.

Great, I was not going to have to have that half inch diameter camera shoved all the way up inside my rectum and all I need to do is read the instructions.  The kit comes with a bracket that is placed between the toilet bowl and the seat cover and you lower the seat once the bracket is in place.  Next you open the sample container and place it inside of the bracket.  You pull your pants down, sit on the toilet and make a bowel movement directly into the container and then remove the sample container from the bracket.  At this time you can finish going, or wipe with toilet paper and discard the bracket.

The next step involves the use of a tube that comes with the kit.  Turn the white tube cap and unscrew it till it is open.  Remove the probe from the tube.  Scrape the surface of your stool sample with the probe until the end has stool on it and make sure the surface of your stool covers the grooves on the probe.  Place the probe back into the open end of the tube and turn the cap to close.  The next step involves soaking of the stool with special preservative so that the lab can test it.  Open the preservative bottle and pour all of the liquid in it over your stool.  Put the lid back on the collection container and make sure that you have pressed the lid tightly enough, where it won’t tighten any more.  Fill out all the shipping labels, place the tube sample and the collection container back in the box, pack it up and ship the sample to the lab

OK I had read all of the Cologuard instructions and I felt a bowel movement approaching, this was an emphatic need to poop and I was more than ready to unburden my bowels.  I unpacked my kit and had everything set up so I could make a deposit in the container and get this over with.  Cue the trumpets, “ba-ba-ba-ba-ba” let the big event begin.  I dropped my pants, sat on the toilet leaning forward with my hands resting on my thighs.  I began to breathe deeply from the bottom of my lungs with my mouth open to prevent any unnecessary straining as I wanted this to come out smoothly.  I began to relax my anal sphincter allowing it to open my bottom, by slowly massaging the area of skin between my anus and my testicles, which I like to call putting my backfield in motion, as this secret trick never fails when I want to let the stool out.  I knew another sure fire way to speed things along was to get into a squatting position, so I lifted my feet slightly off the floor.  I kept using my deep breath to increase the pressure in my abdomen trying to maintain a better control over this, as I wanted to push everything out towards my anus.  I was comfortable and it was going to happen, that is until I looked up and saw that creepy spider situated on top of the roll of toilet paper and I thought maybe I could try and do this at another time.

Tagged by Melanie.