Jämesoolt uuriti. Ei ole otseselt meeldiv kogemus...
Disclaimer - üritasin mitu nädalat seda teksti eesti keeles kirjutada, no täiesti võimatu, sry. Ühtlasi, kas "disclaimer" tõlkub tõesti ainult nii kohmakalt kui "vastutuse välistamine" või eksisteerib mõni parem sõna ka?
The latest step in the long experiment that is figuring out why my digestion refuses to behave for many-a-long-year, was checking the lower digestive tract directly - a.k.a colonoscopy, or bum-cam to mark the calendar events in a bit less cringey, more grinny fashion. I'm sure there is a ton of easy-access information about the Japanese version of the process in Japanese. In English, not so much. And, predictably, nothing in Estonian, hence the (language-failed) effort to write a short summary.
Anyway. The wait time after the colonoscopy was "prescribed" during the second visit to that particular clinic's stomach-specialised doctor was around 3 months. Being properly spoiled by the local done-the-same-day or a week-later-at-the-max procedures (x-rays, CT scans, MRI's, blood- and stool tests, physio intakes etc.), the queue itself was rather shocking, not to mention unnecessarily stressful to plan around. (Period timing full on Murphy? - Check. Messy, but doesn't change the process, btw, in case anyone needs to know.)
At T-4 a pre-visit to the clinic was required to pick up a thick "instruction manual" of the meds, the procedure and the potential complications as well as 3 different meds and speciality food. I was rather impressed by the level of instructions given in English in our local clinic as it is not one of the few foreigner-specialised clinics, which the internet suggests you absolutely MUST go to if you need a colonoscopy in Japan. Read: bullshit, just go to whichever clinic is nearest and see. (Especially since the special clinics may require you to bear the full cost of everything, national health insurance or no.) The nurse doing all the explaining spoke at an understandable level (if a bit scared-to-be-doing-so) and all the pamphlets had been translated (if a bit exaggerated and google-translate-y in places: "you must drink TOO MUCH water all the time!!").
T-3 and T-2 required a speciality diet of approximately 15 food items, out of which, after crossing out everything that my other "banned" list of foods contains, I was left with five: eggs, boiled chicken, rice porridge, cold boiled potatoes and bananas. Allowed drinks were water and green tea. Not that bad, actually, but boy (huh, definitely picked up this parasite word from watching too much Fool Us), with nothing fatty for energy nor fibrous-planty to sustain a have-actually-eaten feeling, it felt like two days of starving.
T-1 diet was extra extra special, came pre-cooked in packages with instructions how to microwave each to an unedible temperature. Seriously, with the correct wattage selected, half of the time was sufficient for the food to boil over and to cause exploding bubbles when trying to remove the bowls from the micro.
The breakfast (at 7.00) consisted of some slightly fishy broth with traces of egg. Lunch (at 13.00) was a "minestrone" soup with 1mm pieces of sthsth sausage and 5mm pieces of what might have been a potato. The side dish of 9 crackers got fed to D due to my aforementioned main those-that-must-not-be-eaten list (topped by wheat). To my utmost surprise, both of these dishes actually tasted great. Yeah, they were mostly just liquid, but still.
The last allowed pre-procedure sustenance, dinner (at 19.00) pouch of "curry" with boiled daikon and an actually decent portion of boiled white rice that I was most hopeful for, however, turned out to be, yet again, a soup, but this time a competely tasteless one. No need to mention that by that point I greedily ate every last drop.
My own special second Murphyesque addition to the T-1 day got triggered by a postcard from the Immigration a few days prior, notifying me about the completion of my new visa, to be picked up from the other side of Tokyo within a week, before the old one expires. And guess what, if they remove polyps during colonoscopy, or take pathology samples, you are not allowed to travel for a week afterwards. Which translated to me waking at 06:00, having the morning soup, walking for 20 minutes, being on the first train for five minutes, tranferring to the second train and staying on that for 15 minutes, then switching to (of all things) the Yamanote Line in time for a 20 minutes of the Monday morning rush hour with the full experience of being squished like pickles in a jar. Followed by a bus or a walk of 20 minutes, queuing at the Bureau doors, and various counters for a few hours, and then doing it all again backwards... On the third day of no proper food, on 4 hrs of sleep, on period, in a heat wave. Fun.
The 2+1 laxatives (in powder and liquid form, respectively, both to be taken with glasses of water) prescribed for 21:00 of the same day worked as one might expect - no, sleeping was not really an option that night either. Managed to snatch an hour and a half before the dictated wake-up time at T-0 05:00 when the task was to take some more tablets and mix and consume (slowly over the course of an hour) a 2 liter pouch of what someone on the net with clearly a brilliant mind for naming things called "the devil's pocari". Pocari being the local "low" quality sportsdrink noone that hasn't got a huge hangover willingly drinks, but that is nevertheless available in near every shop and jidouhanbaiki (drinks' machine... you know the ones on every single street corner - now what does that tell us about the locals and hangovers I wonder...). The big red-lettered instructions forbidding the addition of any "seasoning" (I'm presuming they meant sugar by this?) and the sheer volume of the thing did get me a bit scared, but it actually tasted ok. And, despite having large quantities of water over the night, more liquid (the whole two liters of it) containing some salts and stuff went down remarkably easy.
Followed by more hours of "emptying your colon" as the helpful instruction manual described it, and an exhaustedly grabbed extra hour of couch-sleep, before forcing self vertical again to walk (no bikes allowed) to the clinic by 9.00. Next came documentation, and falling asleep on the bench from sleeplessness and hunger. Then changing into hospital wear (with convenient holes in necessary places), meeting and chatting with more supernice nurses (with these kinds, I sort of understand K's obsession a bit, haha), falling asleep again on the waiting prep-bed. And then being plugged into an IV (wait, I guess the plugging is actually done the other way around... whatever) containing meds that amongst other things like relaxation and painkilling are supposed to put one near-asleep so that the patient doesn't interfere with nor usually recalls the procedure, but is able to react when instructed to do anything or in case of strong pains. Well, I may have discovered something new in common with D - he falls asleep after drinking strong coffee, apparently I get wide awake when injected with a sleeping potion. Yey for odd biochemistry.
The other drug effects at least seemed to be on point, because a quarter of an hour of looking at bizarre images on the screen in front of me in the procedure room passed with no pains or discomfort, after which I got to lie (still wide awake) on the third bed of the processing line, got rid of the IV and my clothes back, got told that no issues were found, nothing was removed, paid the bill of 7500 yen (this is the 30% that is self-paid when on the typical local health insurance, with no tests or removals done - in those cases the sums increase considerably; additional costs for any prior or later doctor's visits ofc), and got cleared to be walked "by an adult family member" (in the supposedly drug-induced haze, that never showed) back home and slowly start eating again. And, finally, sleep.
For clarification - a long recovery time (1-2 weeks), during which travel, exercise, biking etc is forbidden and diet is limited, is necessary when polyps are removed (?or samples taken). But until they look, the doctors never really know what they'll need to do, which is why my visa had to be sorted in advance etc. But with nothing but a peculiar home video obtained, I just took the day easy, but was in full-speed mode again on T+1.
And total side-note - I wasn't exactly truthful earlier. Yeah, writing in Estonian proved impossible, but have been having immense struggles putting these paragraphs down even in English. Until the past few days' devouring of a fantasy duology seems to have untied the tong.. eh, fingers once again. Curious.
And a related side-note - loss of weight over those 3 days was 2sth kg (which is pretty much the maximum weight change I've had in my adult life, and definitely the fastest). That was to be expected after all of that "cleansing". Not expected, however, is that my precious kilos are not wanting to come back a month later :/.
Gratitude for being able to eat (even if still limiting a bunch of foods), increased tremendously with the experience, though. And frustration for not being allowed anything "bread or sweets" is somehow also easier to bear.
Cheers,
Hedi
