Embarrassingly, I Have Lost the Colonoscopy Contest

All championship runs must come to an end

A couple of years ago, I won the colonoscopy contest for the second or third consecutive time. My dominance was so comprehensive that the world had stopped counting how many titles I’d won. It was a lot. That’s all you needed to know.

This week, however, my dynasty ended. My entire world has crumbled. All that is left are the memories.

When I came to in the recovery cubicle at around 2:35 p.m. on Wednesday, Nurse Matthew kicked me out of the bed about ninety seconds later. I wanted to be like, “Do you know who I am… give me a few minutes to recover,” but I didn’t have time. A woman in scrubs immediately wheeled over a wheelchair, and when I said, “Um, I think the doctor was going to stop by,” she replied, “Yeah, just get in the chair. We’ll wheel you over into the hall and park you in the middle of traffic so we can clean the room.”

So, there I was, sitting in the hall in front of the trash can under the glaring artificial light, the white linoleum practically blinding after my brief slumber, when my doctor walked up and shook my hand. He didn’t have my trophy with him, which was odd, but I figured we were mixing it up this time. Maybe doing a little ceremony down in the hospital lobby.

“Everything looked pretty good,” the doctor said with an easy smile. “There was one small polyp I clipped out. It was hard to see, and I had to irrigate the area quite a bit because there was some sediment in there, but you know, we all do the best we can with the prep.”

He might as well have hauled off and punched me in the face. My eyes glazed over. Or, rather, glazed over even more. Because of the very recent anesthesia, my eyes were already resembling Krispy Kreme donuts. I pictured my wheelchair spinning a bit from the impact of the punch, rolling backwards and colliding with a trash can, or more optimistically, Nurse Matthew’s face.

The doctor rambled on a little longer. The polyp was very small. I’m sure it’s benign. Nothing to worry about. The Crohn’s seems to be well under control. No changes to your medication. Blah blah blah. Who cares? I wasn’t listening. My reign as colonoscopy champion was over.

I was tempted to circle back to the sediment comment and the we-all-get-a-participation-trophy song and dance when he finally stopped gabbing, but I was too defeated to even bother with it.

“Just take the L like a man,” I told myself. Hopefully I didn’t say that out loud, but who knows?

I didn’t see it ending this way. I guess nobody does. Champions always expect to stay on top forever. To live forever. That’s what makes us great. A foolish belief in our own invincibility is necessary to achieve such heights of performance. Of course, a world-champion marathoner can’t PR every race. Similarly, I suppose, a world-class colonoscopy patient can’t expect to achieve perfection at every procedure.

Apathy sets in. Overconfidence. Maybe preparation falters a tiny amount. In the colonoscopy game, all it takes is a one-percent drop in performance, and the competition can catch up and feast on your carcass like lions on an antelope.

To be clear, that’s not what happened here. I was fully dialed in. The type of prep the doctor prescribed was clearly to blame. I knew it right when I opened the package from the pharmacy. It was all wrong. Two small bottles of liquid instead of two packages of powder? Nonsense. I pushed the doubts out of my mind to focus on the task at hand. I knew I had to block out all the noise. I absolutely nailed it once again, but there was always this little wisp of doubt in the back of my mind. Something felt off.

I started the prep at 6 p.m. the night before the procedure. I guzzled with gusto. I failed to beat my world record guzzling time from a couple of years ago, but that was okay. I was still easily in the low two-digit minutes. I drank more water and clear liquids than a horse after a 30-mile trek across a desert. I woke promptly at 5 a.m. the next morning and guzzled again. There is nothing I could’ve done better.

The craftsman is only as good as his tools, and in my case, the tool (the pathetic prep) was faulty. That’s the only viable explanation for the so-called sediment. Or possibly the sediment was a hoax? Fake news? I can’t rule it out.

Regardless, I stand before you a humbled man who can no longer call himself a champion. But, as I told the high school tennis team I coached back in 2009 when we fell short of our championship goals: “It’s not about how fast you get there. It’s not about what’s waiting on the other side. It’s the climb.”

I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. I’m proud of the grind. This is a setback, yes, but I’ll be back. Hopefully with some pills or something, because, to be honest, I’m ready to retire from the liquid game for good.

Words by me, Andrew Knott. Best known for duck.

Books:

Love’s a Disaster - contemporary fiction about a marriage proposal gone wrong, complicated families, mini-golf, second-chance love, Florida, sword fighting, and punk rock music.

Fatherhood: Dispatches From the Early Years - essays and humor about the very early years of my parenting journey