I went to see the Doc a few weeks back for some minor issue and along the way inadvertently mentioned that we had a family history of bowel cancer, so he decided it was time for me to head off for a colonoscopy…

I might not be all that bright but I could tell that this didn’t sound fun… The big day is Tuesday, but its the prep that I am already dreading. We have dinner with friends on Sunday and I have been instructed to have plain bland food all day – boiled fish… boiled rice… cornflakes… you get the idea. For a chilli and spice lover its not looking good.

Then Monday is only clear fluids – a fast effectively – before the ‘flush out’ in the evening. Then another flush the next day and nothing to pass my lips at all from 11.00am until the check up at 3pm. What a hoot of a way to spend the long weekend. If I miss breakfast I get grumpy so a day and half is not sounding like fun at all.

So there’s the messed up diet and the messed up work week that has been giving me the irrits.

I was feeling mildly frustrated about this last night and then began reflecting on the blogs of some friends who are currently going thru serious cancer issues. Somehow my mild frustration at the inconvenience is embarrassing, almost shameful.

As I read their stories I can’t imagine the frustration at a life so out of control, at having to be at the hospital so often, at not knowing what the future looks like.

Perspective changes everything. I am about to endure a minor inconvenience. Their lives have been inverted and changed forever.

I am not expecting the tests to show any cancer, (there have been no other signs) but lurking in the back of my mind is the ‘what if?’ question. Maybe they do find something… Maybe life takes a turn like that of my friends… Then what?…

In the last few years I have been increasingly aware of just how little real control I have over my life and also the realisation that sooner or later something is going to ‘get me’. I find it hard to see myself as 46. It sounds old. But a look in the mirror definitely tells the story. I look at pics of long term friends on facebook and realise we are all getting older and this life will end at some point.

I know people who long for ‘heaven’ and to ‘be with the Lord’ etc etc, but I haven’t been one of them. I enjoy being ‘with the Lord’ here on earth and it feels like there is so much to do here that I don’t want to make an exit – even less an early one. I realise that probably sounds a tad unspiritual, because we are supposed to long for the day when we are ‘in heaven’. But I don’t. At least not yet.

As I have got older and my body has lost some of its youthful strength and athleticism I have pondered what lies ahead. Maybe as you get older and older and your body ceases to function well you do increasingly see another life as a positive thing. Maybe you view ‘heaven’ with more anticipation because it brings a freedom from the pain of a decaying physical form. Maybe… But how do you cope with the severing of emotional connections that only grow stronger with years?…

Funny the questions that get raised by a minor check up…

So Tuesday is freckle-cam day. I’ll post the pics on Wednsday… (or not)