By: Mary Fran Bontempo

IMG_0333Next week, my son is getting married. And even though I’m only the mother of the groom (Rule #1: Shut up and wear beige), there’s still a ton of stuff to do.

Dresses, shoes, hair, jewelry, underwear (nothing with holes or outstretch elastic, please), all multiplied by four, as my mother is pretty much my job, and my two daughters, one of whom is flying in from Florida, are in the wedding.

There’s also planning for the rehearsal dinner and since the wedding is at the shore, where my mother very graciously rented two large houses for my entire family to stay for the wedding weekend, there’s outfitting said houses with linens, food, paper products, and then transporting everything from home to that location.

So, since I didn’t have much going on, last week I decided to have a colonoscopy.

My perverse logic goes something like this–I’ve put off the procedure for years, because, well who wants to do that? (Frankly, anything with the word, “colon” in it makes me squeamish. I don’t even like to use them in punctuation. I should have used one in the first sentence of this paragraph and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.) Anyway, I wanted to get it over with before David’s wedding, as Megan’s (my youngest daughter) wedding follows in July, and we’re having her shower here at home and I’ve got a million things to do and I wouldn’t enjoy any of it and I’d just be worrying the entire time that something funky was growing in there, so I decided to just do it already and stop obsessing.

It was not fun.

However, it was not as bad as everyone says. Fortunately, the doctor I used is of the less is more philosophy, so there was only drinking stuff and taking pills involved–no inserting weird things in places things have no business being. I simply mixed a tasteless powder with the clear liquid of my choice–clear liquids are a big thing with colonoscopies– took four pills and spent the afternoon and early evening running to the bathroom.

There was no discomfort, just a lot of running (literally), so it was much easier than having a stomach bug, because I didn’t feel lousy. As far as the liquid diet went, after drinking all of the medicinal stuff I wasn’t hungry anyway, so lemon jello and chicken broth more than sufficed.

The next day, I arrived at the surgical center and was quickly prepped. I’m slightly terrified of anesthesia (it took them an entire day to wake me up after I had my wisdom teeth out, and I kept passing out and throwing up), and I expressed that concern to the anesthesiologist, who comforted me by saying that they use propofol these days, which is the drug that killed Michael Jackson.

Needless to say, I was not comforted. However, I let them wheel me into the procedure room without screaming, and the colonoscopy itself was…well, I really don’t know how it is was they knocked me out within seconds. When I awoke, to my husband standing next to me, I a) knew I was not dead, and b) knew it was the same day, as he was wearing the same clothes. The doctor came in, told me everything was fine and then said, “We’ll dance again in seven to ten years.”

My point? If I can get a colonoscopy, what with my life’s madness as well as my wildly irrational fears, anyone can. Do it. It’s really important and it can save your life.

Best of all, the next dancing I’m going to do will be at my son’s wedding. And I’m not wearing beige.