It began at five in the evening. I opened the white package and pulled out one of the brown bottles and the empty plastic measuring cup. I poured out the contents of one bottle into the cup and then bottled water the rest of the way to the fill line. I took a deep breath and drank all sixteen ounces in one go. It tasted slightly salty but medicine sweet. The aftertaste lingered at the back of the throat and edges of my gums near the cheeks. I swished water around my mouth to try to wash it down. My beard was wet and dripping after I tried to wash and wipe it off. My stomach felt full as I looked at the other two sixteen ounce bottles of water knowing that I had to finish both of them within the hour.

She said when she did it she was on the toilet for awhile purging and eventually she could feel the stomach acid and it burned. I was hoping not to have that experience but I needed to get the examination completed to make sure I did not get sick like my grandmother. And, my sister had this done and they found and removed polyps which are the first sign of colon cancer. She's two years younger than I am.

Every ten minutes or so I would work away to try to drink all the water before the one hour deadline. I didn't like doing this to my stomach and system but I was paranoid that I wouldn't drink enough water and there would be problems. Fifteen minutes in and my stomach felt terrible. I was light headed and thought I was making something out of nothing and stressing myself out thinking about it.

The visits to the toilet were over after about an hour and everything settled down.

The next morning at eight o'clock I began chugging the mixture again. This time I used some mouth wash to neutralize the flavor. When I hit the eight ounce mark of water on top of the concoction my stomach felt bloated and distended, nausea creeping in. My mouth felt a bit minty and more fresh than yesterday. However, there was a slight taste like pepper or roast beef. My beard was moist around the edges of my mouth and my nose was running.

She drove me to the facility and we rode the elevator up with a nurse pushing a wheelchair. She was wearing a mask. When we got into the front room they gave me a piece of paper with her name and phone number on it and told me to wait until they called my name. I was eventually led down a hall and into an open room that was separated by curtains into rooms: I was in Room 7. I was told to change out of everything, to put it all in a big plastic bag that would sit under the rolling hospital bed and travel with me. All I was allowed to wear was the provided open-back gown and my socks. I waited and listened to another patient go through the intake process, hearing his answers to questions about a history of cancer in his family, his date of birth, and what to expect of the colonoscopy process. Then, it was my turn.

The nurse told me she was wearing a mask because at her child's charter school there had been a virus. She said it wasn't Covid. And, she kept getting interrupted from taking leisure time on the weekends by events in her life. She took extra time to secure the needle and tubing for the intravenous drip on me. Then, some other folks made introductions and wheeled me to the operating room where I learned the names of the pit crew and then was asked to take a few deep breaths and I was unconscious.

When I woke up I was in Room 7 and she was there with some stapled papers in her hand. They explained the diagnosis and I was asked to get dressed and ready to be wheeled out to the car.

When we got home I was groggy from the medication. I ate a couple of spinach feta wraps from a coffee shop and washed it down with some chai latte. Then, I fell asleep.

The next day I was experiencing rushes of energy and felt good and energized so I walked to pick up packages and carried them back and it destroyed me. I felt light headed, my back ached, I couldn't sit up straight, and I couldn't drink more than a few sips of cola. My body below the waist felt very hot almost like a fever. I was able to get into bed and lay down and the pain that felt like it was where muscle connected to vertebrae, it started to fade and I was able to sleep most of the day and night.

On Saturday I woke up feeling good and she wanted to drink and watch YouTube videos so we did that. I didn't feel pain from the alcohol so I thought I was doing pretty good. Then I woke up alone on the couch and that didn't help my back and neck much. I got to bed and when I woke up again I felt terrible. I was desperately hungry but too nauseous to eat more than a few small bites at a time. This process lasted hours. Once the sun went down I was able to make it into my home office to work and write this.

Sometimes I make a thing

There's this task I used to do that I've been running from for about ten years. It involves thinking about inputs and outputs, how to load, sometimes transform, and then store information. I met up with someone I used to help with a program and now he has ventured beyond my level of expertise and into territory I'm not interested in exploring. But, the tasks he is completing in this program could be far more easily done in the world I escaped a decade ago. Thus, I've dusted off this old script and I am exploring little things I made and stole from the Internet, from other coders and makers.

I call this “bk.sh”

# !/bin/sh
# bk filename
# zip filename as filename2022-10-26-1012pm.zip
if [ -z $1 ];
then
echo “you have to enter a single filename”;
else
bknow=$(date +“%Y-%d-%m-%H%M%p”);
bkfile=$1_$bknow.zip;
zip -r $bkfile as $1;
bknow=
bkfile=
fi

I added the following line to my ~/.zprofile file so that it would be with me whenever I opened Terminal...
alias bk='/users/username/Dev/scripts/bk.sh'