Ask A Genius 1117: A Colonoscopy for a Mr. Rosner
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/09/28
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What happened with your colonoscopy?
Rick Rosner: Well, for those who don’t know, a colonoscopy is a procedure where, once you hit a certain age, doctors stick a camera up your butthole to look inside your colon and remove any polyps that have developed. Polyps aren’t cancerous, but if you don’t take them out, they could turn cancerous.
Jacobsen: Right, and you have to prep for it.
Rosner: Yeah. They give you these powerful salts—sodium, magnesium, and potassium salts. You drink this awful solution, then more water, and your body wants to get rid of it, so it pulls all the liquid and poop out of your system. You end up with horrible diarrhea, but by the time you’re done, you’re supposed to be passing clear liquid. This was my fourth colonoscopy, so I know how to prep. I go in, they stick the camera up my butt while I’m lying on my side, and they give me fentanyl to put me in twilight sleep—where you’re not fully unconscious but relaxed and sedated.
Jacobsen: Did you remember it?
Rosner: Last time, I was awake enough to watch it on the screen, but this time I fell asleep. They got a third of the way through my colon. There’s the descending colon, the transverse colon, which runs across your abdomen, and the ascending colon, which connects to your large intestine. They got through the descending colon, but when they hit the transverse colon, there was still poop there. It didn’t wreck the view, but it was lying in pools and blocked some of the views underneath. They ran the camera down to my ascending colon, then pulled it out.
Jacobsen: So what went wrong?
Rosner: The doctor was pissed because they didn’t get all the way through. The nurse came in afterward and said they only got a third of the way because they ran into feces. I saw pictures—they take snapshots of every section, and yeah, there was some poop in the pictures. I assume the doctor was annoyed and frustrated, and now I have to return for another one.
Rosner: I felt like I wasted everyone’s time because there was still shit in me. I’m probably going to have to go back for another colonoscopy, this time with a two-day prep instead of one day, which means two days of shitting water out of my butt, maybe in six months or a year. This was my fourth colonoscopy—what the hell happened?
Jacobsen: What’s your theory?
Rosner: Well, two months ago, they froze a tiny tumour out of my kidney, and it was successful. They used liquid nitrogen to freeze this one-centimetre tumour, turning it into an ice ball and killing it. But the tumour was near the outside of my kidney, and when they froze that part, they also froze one of the nerves coming off my spine that runs to one of my horizontal abdominal muscles.
It turns out we have two layers of abs—the vertical ones that make up the six-pack and another layer underneath that wraps around your gut like a belt. They knocked out half of one of those belts. So now I have what they call a “pseudo-hernia,” which means there’s a little bulge where that part of the belt isn’t working. If I’m lucky, the nerve will regenerate, and the muscle will return. But right now, there’s this relaxed area.
Jacobsen: So, how does that connect to the colonoscopy?
Rosner: Well, Carole looked up why colonoscopy prep can fail, and one reason is a hernia—a real hernia, where there’s a tear between the muscles and the intestines can poke out, which can create pockets where poop hides out. So, my theory is, if a real hernia can do that, maybe my pseudo-hernia let some poop hide out too. If my transverse colon, which runs across the front of my gut, was poking into that gap in the muscle, some poop could’ve stayed hidden during the prep.
Jacobsen: That’s frustrating.
Rosner: Yeah, because the cleanout process is horrible—you end up shitting 20 times in 10 hours. And now, with this two-day prep, it will be even worse. I’m hoping the muscle comes back before I have to go through another colonoscopy. Anyway, there you go.
Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org
Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com
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