6/1/23

 Thursday, June 1, 2023

Double Dip Day

Up and down all night with the colonoscopy prep, and slept when I could in the bedroom recliner.  59℉, high of 74℉, sunny, wind SE at 2 mph, gusts to 14 mph.  Sun rose at 5:14 and will set at 8:24, 15+10.

A propos of nothing in today's journal entry is this acrylic mural I did from a Time Magazine cover on the wall of my workroom/studio in our house on Newton Avenue in Shorewood of a fighter pilot shot down and captured during the Balkan Wars.  I liked it and would have had the plaster wall removed and saved if I could have done so reasonably, which I could not.  I painted over it to return the space to one of four bedrooms in the house we sold to a friend, former student, and fellow Milwaukee Bar Association board of directors member Kathy Nusslock.

Exhausting prep; No polyps.   The cleansing started out not so bad and I was foolishly optimistic, not expecting the process to continue all night, seemingly hourly.  . .  I felt plumbing equipment discomfort going to and at the GI Clinic.  Post-procedure word: everything looked OK. Scaredy cat, wimp, worrywart, catastrophizer.  . .  Again I was impressed by the professionalism and caring attitudes of the medical staff, especially the GI nurses.   With the semi-official age cutoff for this procedure at 85, this morning's was my last colonoscopy and I can't say I'll miss them, at least the preps.  Not sure about the upper GI endoscopy. As always, the sedative mix of Versed and fentanyl not only put me out during the procedures but led me to LaLaLand during much of the rest of the day, very relaxing, almost too relaxing to be writing this.  On the other hand, the cleansing effect of the prep solution has continued through the day.  Not expected and not good.😳

Hospital

BY MARIANNE BORUCH

It seems so—         

I don’t know.  It seems   

as if the end of the world   

has never happened in here.   

No smoke, no   

dizzy flaring except   

those candles you can light   

in the chapel for a quarter.   

They last maybe an hour   

before burning out.   

                            And in this room   

where we wait, I see   

them pass, the surgical folk—     

nurses, doctors, the guy who hangs up   

the blood drop—ready for lunch,   

their scrubs still starched into wrinkles,   

a cheerful green or pale blue,   

and the end of a joke, something   

about a man who thought he could be—   

what?  I lose it   

in their brief laughter.

Poem copyright ©2006 by Marianne Boruch,