Where’s The Poop?!?!

Warning: If you have any kind of issue with human bodily functions, I suggest you leave this page NOW.

(Written Saturday night.)

I’m not trying to be gross here, but I think it’s important to talk about the things that make us human. I feel that when we talk about stuff like this, others can lighten up on clutching the pearls so much.

So earlier this week I had a wellness checkup with my doctor. Since I am now 45 years old, I learned I am now old enough to add a new thing to keep an eye on – my colon.

As we age, we have to take care of ourselves in different ways. I don’t know about men, but women get to do all sorts of stuff throughout our lives to take care of our health. When we start our period, some stuff starts. When we become sexually active, there’s new stuff to take care of, like Pap smears. Eventually, we get to do mammograms. Apparently, when we turn 45 we get to add colon screenings to our list of health care.

At my appointment, my doctor let me know I could do a traditional colonoscopy or do an at-home thing with Cologuard. Of course, the colonoscopy sounds like the scariest thing in the world to me. I’ve had to get catheters twice in my life, and it totally sucked! So I chose to do the Cologuard.

Well, this thing gets mailed to me at home yesterday. I read the instructions and watched the how-to video. I decided to do the test this morning. That way I could mail it off and move on.

I waited until like 9am when I knew I would be ready to go with the “go.” I set up the whole thing on my toilet. When I sat down to go, I realized with the Cologuard thing I was not in my usual booty-drop-in-toilet position. So I couldn’t go!

I got up, walked around the bathroom to try to get stuff to move down. I did it like 6 times! There really was stuff there ready to make its way out, but as soon as I sat on the Cologuard thing, it’s like I got performance anxiety! Uuuuuuggggghhhhhh!

After an hour of epic failure, I gave up. Vince suggested I take a run on the treadmill to see if that would get things going. It didn’t.

So I made my breakfast smoothie and hoped the spinach in said smoothie would give things a little push. Still no.

Finally at 12:20 I decided this had to happen now, or I wouldn’t be able to get it done by the time UPS would close.

I got on the Cologuard thing again and had to do some intense pushing, but it finally happened! I was excited to finally get this done at 12:40pm! Jeez! It should not be this difficult! (And honestly, for as much effort as I put in, I should have gotten way more out!)

I completed all the steps to get the sample ready. Very gross might I add! I threw on my shoes and quickly drove myself to the UPS store to drop it off. Whew!

But yeah, the Cologuard was really easy to do. I’m glad I had that option. Now I’m just hoping that #1 I did it right, and #2 (tiny pun intended, hee-hee!) the results come back with no problems.

Anyways, have a great week!