Early in November my cell phone danced. A young voice informed me that I was scheduled for a procedure at St Boniface Hospital at 9:30 am on December 30th.
“What procedure?”
“Your doctor has requested a colonoscopy.”
“That was three years ago. I hoped it had been forgotten.”
A young laugh accompanied the “no”.
A week later, receiving the letter from Dr. Botkin with specific instructions, reluctantly, I called to confirm the appointment. Anticipation for Christmas swept it from mind until ten days before Christmas a momentary eclipse, a letter from the hospital with a form to be filled out, to be returned post haste.
This efficiently accomplished, I re-focussing on Advent and Christmas. Still in the aura of Christmas and reading about the encroaching Omicron COVID variant on Monday, December 27th, I called the hospital. Prayers to St John!
Perhaps a cancellation. But no! And so, midnight Wednesday, the 29th, began the liquid day of preparation for the impending invasion. Chicken broth and Gaterade were the prelude to the pièce de résistance binge, the washing down of two Dulcolax tablets with sixteen cups of cold Colyte preparation beginning at 6 p.m. and concluding no later than 10 p.m. Yes, 4 litres! Yes, ugh! And yes, the inevitable results!
Yet remarkably, kindness is what characterized Thursday, December 30th. At 8:00 a.m. Con courageously navigated the traffic in a hazy world and icy pavement, peering through half fogged windows, down Portage Avenue across the Provencher Bridge up Tache to deposit me at the south entrance of St Boniface hospital.
Inside, a young women greeted me warmly, providing me a fresh new mask, with specific instructions to Admittance. Fogged glasses meant losing my way on the first floor; a gracious workman finally guided me to the admitting desk. The clerk’s smiles and irrepressible good cheer took me through with my appropriate wrist bands to my Stryker stretcher.
There nurse Anita took charge of me in her busy ward. She, amidst beds flowing in and out and nurses tending to others, was unflappably gracious and kind. A brief wait in the hall, my turn came quickly. Two doctors and a nurse are unfailingly attentive and kind, although perhaps my joking about the doctor’s name sounding like an Elizabethan weapon, “bodkin”, which he then described– “a small sharp dagger”– may have speeded up the anaesthetist plunging needle.
That was kind too. The rest was silence.
Some time later, Nurse Anita roused me from a peace filled sleep, placing my clothes bundle on the chair. After telephoning Paul, Nurse Anita cheerfully accompanied wonky me to the main entrance of the hospital handing me over to him to drive me home.
Reclining in my home bedroom chair still in a slight stupor, my thoughts were in amazement at all the kind people who accompanied me in this peculiar adventure! What kindness! And the information Anita shared with me before dismissing me was kind too. No polyps. Everything normal. Yes, lots of kindness. Good thoughts at the end of the year!