The procedure

The strangest thing is that I have almost no memory of the whole experience - if you can call it an experience. If a tree falls in the forest, etc. Coming out of anesthesia, anything that happened when I was under, getting dressed, walking out to the car with Gven, the ride home - all a blank. She says she was in the room when I woke up, and I told her a joke (rabbi and a frog go in a bar, bartender says, Where'd you get that? Frog says, Brooklyn - there's hundreds of them!), remembered from The Aristocrats, very unlike me to remember the punch line.

So I wanted to jot down a few things before I completely came down from the demerol and valium cocktail they slipped me, and it must have been a healthy dose because I didn't feel a thing. Or even register being present. Making notes now, while I eat my first solid food following a day of fasting and purging, enjoying the midday sun on my face and arms, I can bask on the sunny patio after the cold and sterile offices of Central Swingstate Endoscopy.

The team was very nice, very professional, mostly. The receptionist (you have insurance card, yes?) suffered a brief communication breakdown over the wording of the consent form (just a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo, she said, and it's expensive to fix it) while the waiting room blared the inane Regis and Kelly morning interview with a starlet and her wannabe-starlet sister, all of which only lasted a few minutes and oddly was the worst part. The dark-eyed technician gave me the gown and little nonskid slippers, showed me to my gurney, explained the process, asked a few personal history questions, and administered a saline IV. The nurse appeared at the foot of the gurney to ascertain what it was we were here to do today, then wheeled me into the procedure room, hooked up the sedative and anesthetic, assured me that I should ask for more if it became uncomfortable (faggedaboudit!), and introduced the young man assisting. The tall Asian doctor appeared at my side to introduce herself, shook my hand, and made lots of eye contact.

I needn't have brought a book, by the way. There was no down-time, and they run an efficient operation, er, procedure. As soon as they directed me to turn over on my left side and pull my knees up (almost fetal position, my last thought before the drugs took effect), then everything fades, so I feel like I missed the main event, like I went out for popcorn during the entire time-warp-shortened movie. I will be told what the scope found as it allegedly snaked around inside me. (Actually a written report was issued then and there, complete with color photos!) Both before and after, I felt a little vulnerable in the role of the patient/object being acted upon by the agents/experts in their scrubs and suits.

Now that I've had a delicious lunch of leftover pasta salad and a spinach burrito, I'm starting to come around, and I no longer feel like a blank slate. I can indulge in a cup of coffee and and orange fizz, sit in the sun and read all afternoon if I want to, and maybe do a yoga class tonight. This unusual discretionary time, when I'm not supposed to operate heavy equipment and there's still a slight cramp in the pit of my stomach, is perfect for reading the last few chapters of The Fatigue Artist, this amazing book I'm halfway through.

It's aptly named but doesn't read like a novel, as the cover claims, more like a memoir of a writer going through a healing/grieving process after her journalist husband's murder. Her conversations with her performance artist friend, student step-daughter, actor lover, clueless doctor, wise herbalist, helpful neighbor, tai chi teacher, and other New York characters are all grist for the mill of struggle to write a book by collecting data, listening to and remembering her symptoms and other things happening around her.

Like her, I'm doing some of that for a short time today, listening to the condition of my head, heart, belly, and legs to try to discern what I'm capable of so far. Yesterday while fasting I was good for an hour-long bike ride but not a hard workout. After the prescribed lemon-lime-flavored binge and purge, drinking eight ounces every ten minutes and going through more than a gallon in three hours, which then goes through me just as fast, I still had it in me to pull a few weeds, transplant some herbs, and restack some firewood. Luckily it was a sunny but cool day, like today.

After reading for a while in the healing sunshine, letting food enter my drained system, I was ready to go. I moved and split some logs that have been drying for a year, clearing space for the last corner of the never-ending fence project. Then I cleaned up and went to a rejuvenating vinyasa class and came home to a spectacular bowl of rice, kidney beans, homegrown red chilis, and fresh tomatoes. Life is good.