Midlife Meditation

Friday a piece of me disappeared. Some background: as I said in my last post, I had a colonoscopy on Friday. The result, succinctly put: I'm not going to die of cancer. Not yet, anyway. This was a huge relief for me and my loved ones--those I told about it, that is. Even though I'm blogging about it, I'm old-fashioned enough that it makes me blush to even type the word "colon." There was another part to this procedure that does not make me blush, but troubles me at the philosophical level. It's something that worried me the first time I had one of these, though I didn't experience it at that time. It's amnesia. Some deep background: prior to my first (blush) colonoscopy, I had never been "under." Every previous medical or dental procedure I'd had involved only local anesthesia. I was conscious through the whole thing, uncomfortably so at times. (I subscribe to the theory that says redheads are anesthesia-resistant, and it's bo...

Yesterday I got a reprieve. To be more specific, a couple of months ago, in preparation for my first physical with my new Kaiser Permanente primary care doctor I submitted a stool sample. It was a minor icky inconvenience, and I thought little of it at the time. But then I got a note on my phone's Kaiser app that there was a message for me: a new test result. Opening the message, I learned that there was blood in the sample. I saw the doctor and talked with her about the test. I'd had a colonoscopy less than two years ago, and while some polyps were removed, they were benign, so she thought there was very little chance I had anything to worry about. Even so, she thought I'd better play it safe, and have another colonoscopy. So the day after Christmas, I did my prep: a liquid diet, massive doses of laxative, and I'll spare you the obvious details of what happened then. Friday morning, Amy drove me to the hospital, and I was speedily checked in, undressed, hooked...