Test

I have been trying to model responsible health behaviors for Gary, and to that end (ahem), I am testing for colon cancer. 

This time: no prep, no sedative: I am using the Poop it -> Mail it -> Test it Cologuard test. 

I expected these supplies: a microscope slide, a wooden collection stick, and a durable envelope. That's what I was expecting.

What I got was a pressure cooker.

Evidently they expect that one makes a deposit directly into the pressure cooker. There is a maximum size but not a minimum size, so that's going to be difficult to judge. There's some other stuff to do, some alchemy with chemicals,  and then it all goes back in the box and is sent off to the lab. 

Sadly, it turns out Gary can't do it at all, because he had a pre-cancerous polyp before, but I can. I can't do it yet, because Memorial Day might slow the shipment, but once that's over then the scat is in the mail.  

Will it be preferable to a colonoscopy? Has to be, right? Turns out Gary finds all this manipulation so distasteful that it's mentally prepared him for his colonoscopy in 2023, so I've done my job. 

Comments

[KC]

Fabulous work. Glad Gary will be colonoscopied!

(I know someone for whom giving a fecal sample is The Worst Test and I... do not find it *fun* and it is a bit gross, but I must not have those aversions that strongly? Either that or I've had more "other" medical tests done, including a colonoscopy [but also substantially more-unpleasant tests than that particular colonoscopy was]. But still: this person would rather get a blood test than do a fecal sample *AND* they normally feel dizzy the rest of the day when they get a blood test done. So. It's a mystery to me.)

[theQueen]

KC - That raises an interesting question: worst test ever. i think my worst was my second colonoscopy that devolved into my first clinical depression.

[KC]

Any test that causes clinical depression probably wins, yeah! Was there any obvious link? Really depressing results? Gut microbiome disruption messing with your neurochemicals? Something else?

(my first colonoscopy had therapeutically positive effects, which isn't supposed to happen, but my IBS was less cranky for a *month* afterwards, which was good but baffling. Probably a gut flora thing, but who knows...)

I've never had one, but there's a test for myasthenia gravis where they poke needles into you to touch your nerves and then zap the nerves with electricity and you are fully awake and the machine makes kind of horrible staticky noises.

Personally, it's probably the lower GI x-ray-with-contrast which was where we found out that my colon contracts involuntarily and very painfully if it is fully inflated, as they were attempting to do. Neither dignified nor pleasant, we'll say, in results.

[theQueen]

KC - my colon just cramped in sympathy with yours. also, evidently a lot of people have psychological reactions to Versed, the drug they use to knock you out for a colonoscopy. Some people have psychotic breaks. I've had it since then and didn't have a recurrence.

[KC]

YIKES. We like to catch a break sometimes, but not a psychotic one... I'm glad you've since had a colonoscopy with no post-colonoscopy depression.

Honestly, if I hadn't been in so much pain that I was nearly blind and entirely incoherent (they told me to roll over; I rolled over until they panicked and stopped me from rolling off the table), I would have been incredibly embarrassed by the contrast fluid going *everywhere* and the general train wreck of it all, so maybe it was good to be in enough pain that it's only a dim, slightly depersonalized memory? Maybe?

[theQueen]

KC - that does sound awful. By the way, I can report that a husband will not take your Cologuard box to the UPS any more than he will buy you tampons.

[KC]

I am not surprised that a husband who is squeamish about buying tampons would also be squeamish about taking a Cologuard box to the UPS, although honestly, how many people at the UPS would know what is *in* a Cologuard box?

Successfully delivered, though?

[theQueen]

KC - I would be able to ID one after this experience. I was a little miffed he put me out in the world, but i only felt with one person, and he met me at the door and was masked.