Get Checked
I am 51 years old, but I feel young.
I exercise at least six days a week. I hit the treadmill at the local YMCA, lift weights, and do HIIT programs via many fitness apps. Despite a gnarly accident in 2017, I still ride my road bike. I consider myself reasonably healthy.
We are bombarded with messaging scolding us to take care of ourselves, via exercise, diet, preventative medicine, or prescription drugs. Lose 30 pounds via a three-day cleanse. Stop drinking by eating gummies. Get shredded abs without touching a weight. Drug ads with catchy tunes that warn you about conditions you’ve never heard of. It’s all questionable. It’s white noise. Much like you, I pay little attention to it.
So, naturally, this is a public service announcement about preventative medicine. It all started when one of my teeth fell out.
It didn’t “fall” so much as slide. I was eating dinner at home and found half a tooth in my mouth. Picture an iceberg calving from a glacier. I called the dentist the next morning and got an emergency appointment for the following day.
He told me that my teeth were being attacked by acid. He likened the condition to that seen in the mouths of bulimics. The dentist guessed it was acid reflux, or gastroesophageal reflux disease (thankfully shortened to GERD). He says I need crowns across my entire mouth, but it’s useless until I get the acid thing fixed. He suggested I visit an ear, nose, and throat doctor as well as a gastroenterologist.
I have a visceral fear of doctors and dentists, likely an offshoot of a larger anxiety. I’ve been under a psychiatrist’s care for the better part of a decade. I’ve been diagnosed with OCD and taken medication for same. Going to a doctor, or a dentist, with the threat of anesthesia, is level-10. It’s a slow-motion panic attack. The height of the anxiety sine wave. I should write about this in a separate entry, if only because one person might read it and sympathize. Let’s save that.
Anyway: the dentist I never want to see is asking me to go visit two doctors I never want to see.
(Let’s get this out of the way: the dentist’s name is Dr. Mark Matar. The ENT’s name is Dr. Mimi Tran, and the gastroenterologist is Dr. Marlon Ilagan. They are all excellent at their jobs and professional to the point of being elite. None of this is their fault. They are all wonderful to me. I acknowledge my anxiety, and own it.)
Dr. Tran stuck a camera in my ears, up my nose, and down my throat, and deemed me sufficient. Whatever the problem was would have to be discovered by Dr. Ilagan. Visited him and told him the story. He asked how old I was.
All men over the age of 50 know what’s coming.
“Have you ever had a colonoscopy?” he asked.
My wife had already threatened me with further bodily harm if I answered that question dishonestly, so: an appointment was made.
Just for fun, Dr. Ilagan added an endoscopy to the menu. I mean, we’re here, we’re anesthetized, what the hell. The appointment was October 11.
As many men over 50 know, one must fast for 24 hours prior to a colonoscopy. Nothing but clear liquids. Further, one must take a healthy amount of laxatives in order to clear the road for the good doctor. This means you spend all day and all night hungry, and in the bathroom. Is it a miserable 24 hours? Yes, a little. But for patients like me, the true misery is in the waiting.
Nurses and physician’s assistants are pretty good at spotting the white-knuckle flyers. When I was taken back at Dr. Ilagan’s office in Orlando, they caught on quickly. Questions were answered in clipped sentences. Left hand shaking a bit when the pulse oximeter is attached. Perhaps the biggest clue was when I kicked over the bedpan and sprinted for the lobby in my backless gown.
(Okay, I thought about it.)
Of course, anesthesia works, and of course, I didn’t feel or remember anything, and of course, the logical side of my brain KNEW this going in, but anxiety is produced by the lizard side of the brain, which works out a lot and usually kicks the logical side’s ass, and that’s why therapy exists. That’s a blog topic for another time.
This topic is aimed at men in my category, over the age of 50: go to your doctor. Schedule the colonoscopy, or the endoscopy, or whatever you’re due for.
Scoreboard: Nine polyps, between 5 mm and 1.5 cm, all apparently benign, all successfully removed. Dr. Ilagan sat me down and called me a “troublemaker.” Had I waited two or three years, he said, there’s a very good chance that some or all of those polyps would have become cancerous. I asked him if there was anything I was doing that caused the polyps; he said it was the luck of the draw. I have to follow up with him in a few weeks and - oh boy - get another colonoscopy in one year.
I cannot and will not preach. I’ve hardly been a role model when it comes to preventative health. But if you are at all like me — confident that you’re taking care of yourself, reluctant to enter a waiting room — I’m here to tell you that the only way out is through. The weeks leading up to the appointment sucked. The 24 hours prior sucked more. Being in a blind panic as the anesthesia is hooked up is nothing I would wish on anyone. Even though the fear is irrational, the feelings are real, and not easily overcome.
The consequences of doing nothing, however, can be unnecessarily tragic. It freaks you out? Me, too. Make the appointment anyway.
