Today is my 47th birthday, so I started the celebration last week with the most fun thing someone my age can give themselves:
A colonoscopy!
Colorectal cancer was the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States last year, and the number is getting younger. Since 2021, the official recommendation is to get tested starting at age 45 instead of age 50, whether it's an at-home test or a camera focused where the sun doesn't shine.
The damn disease especially affects Mexican-American men like me, and many of them don't get screened. Only 46% of men are up to date, compared to 60% of white men, 61% of Puerto Rican men and 49% of Central and South Americans, according to the American Cancer Society.
The statistics are even worse when it comes to people in my age range: Only 9% of Mexican Americans between 45 and 49 have had their colons checked, compared to 20% of our white peers.
The American Cancer Society cites “structural racism, a higher likelihood of poverty, and language barriers.” The reason I was late was simpler:
for asshole.
My career at The Times began when my mother was dying of ovarian cancer after years of doctors dismissing her health problems. I lost my beloved classmates to leukemia while I was a student at Chapman University 25 years ago. Random abdominal pains have plagued me since college: the price of a stressful job, I always thought.
However, when my doctor scheduled a colonoscopy two years ago, after I turned 45, I let the date pass. When he mailed me a home test, I let it expire.
The idea of putting a tube in my tuchus didn't scare me, nor did the famous preparation of drinking a bad-tasting liquid to cleanse the intestinal tract. I just didn't think I needed a colonoscopy yet and always had an excuse ready.
Too busy with work. Annual physicals I passed with few red flags. I eat relatively healthy. While I love my Manhattans, I don't drink like I used to. I don't exercise much, but I still don't lose kilos. Plus, high cholesterol is the bane of the men in my family, not cancer, so why worry?
In November, my doctor gently reprimanded me for ignoring my colonoscopy date of 2024. Good. Two days at home and a column out of this? It's a life.
The first appointment available through my provider was in September, or I could go out of network at no additional cost. Part of me wanted to delay it for the usual reasons. Then I remembered that it's an election year and I should probably be covering the midterms in their final weeks instead of defecating.
I let the Mexiclan, what I call the text chat with my closest friends, know what I was about to do. Memes quoting the fart scene from “Blazing Saddles” and others too rude to mention in a family newspaper immediately littered my phone.
Then came the sad reality that we are no longer young men.
“I need to do that too,” my cousin Plas texted me.
“That'll be me in April,” his brother Vic chimed in.
“We will all retire someday, but hopefully not soon,” added Art, a friend since high school who is Mexiclan’s resident Aristotle.
My father, who survived testicular tumor removal 30 years apart, took me to a clinic in Orange on Friday.
“They just give you anesthesia and then you sleep,” Papi said in Spanish, remembering the time he had his only colonoscopy about 15 years ago. “And then you wake up and they tell you, 'Relax, relax. Everything's going to be okay.'”
Why hadn't he received more?
“My doctor never said to do another one,” she said. “So it's a good thing they're forcing young people to do it now. You're young! You'll be fine.”
There is a whole genre of colonoscopy offices, from Katie Couric to Dave Barry, that describe the procedure in language better suited to covering Fallujah or the “fear factor.” But it's not as dramatic as people think.
Yes, swallowing the liquid the night before was an ordeal: try drinking three liters of anything in three hours, go to sleep, and then wake up six hours later to drink one last liter. But the pharmacists gave me a powder that gave the taste and smell of citrus blossom water; I think it would combine well with mezcal. Sure, I couldn't be more than a few steps away from a bathroom, but what followed was simply nature taking its course, albeit with the dial on 11.
I filled out some paperwork, put on a backless dress, lay down on a bed covered with a warm blanket, and waited my turn softly singing rancheras and Beatles songs. Patients moved in and out of the colonoscopy room with the efficiency of a conveyor belt.
The doctor showed up and an anesthesiologist did his thing. A nurse asked me to turn on my side and then everything went black.
The colonoscopy lasted half an hour and I didn't feel anything. My only complaint: The medical team was working on “Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. While I understand that everyone in the room was probably a member of Generation X and that the song is a masterpiece, the last thing I needed to hear at that moment was Anthony Kiedis lamenting his drug days.
Shortly after waking up, a nurse asked me to put on my clothes; There were more people waiting to go next. As he wheeled me out, I read the sheet of paper someone had handed me. The anesthesia hadn't worn off, so I didn't understand anything except one word I hoped I wouldn't see:
Polyps. Three of them.
The nurse said the doctor had successfully removed the growths and was sending them for biopsies.
“Should I be worried?” I remember murmuring.
She responded that the doctor would have talked to my father and me immediately if he had found visible malignancies, but that the biopsy would tell more.
I started silently cursing myself on the way home. I should have had a colonoscopy when my doctor suggested it a year and a half ago. I should have ordered another home kit, at the very least. And I was also worried about my generation: all the other patients that day were at least 20 years older than me.
None were Latino.
“How old are you going to be again?” Daddy asked, trying to cheer me up. “I still remember you when you were born!” He said it was good that the doctor removed the polyps before they turned into cancer and that I had inspired him to get a colonoscopy soon.
“We always immediately think of the worst when we hear bad news,” Papi said as he opened the door to my house and made sure I sat down. “We can't. We just have to hope for the best.”
The Mexican also supported him.
“Had [a colonoscopy] Early last year,” Art texted. “I removed some small polyps. I have to do another one every five years instead of ten.”
“Something similar happened to me and I have to get one every three years,” Dave responded.
The Butcher (we called him that because that was his profession before he retired after surviving stage 4 colon cancer 15 years ago) had the best words of comfort. He posted a GIF of a man yelling “Everything okay!!!” as he pokes his head through a clean tube.
I laughed at the Mexican's comment while trying to focus on the good. Two small polyps were flat, harder to detect and more likely to turn into cancer, so thank goodness the doctor caught them. Another was 10 millimeters, a size when gastroenterologists start to really worry that larger polyps are more likely to turn into something bad.
Happy birthday, indeed.
I receive the biopsy results in about a week. For now, I continue to study the photos of my polyps as if they were the Rosetta Stone and find solace in the fact that I ordered the earlier colonoscopy instead of the later one.
My hope is to turn out well, of course. I also hope that others read this and realize that they shouldn't delay something so simple and so essential.
Hopefully, I stopped being a stupid before it was too late.
