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Day 2: 5.3.17

Just kidding—I was wrong. My first colonoscopy was actually on 5.4.17. Day 2 was more tests, more prep, more waiting in a body that already felt like it was turning against me. I’ll spare the details. Some things don’t need to be written twice to be remembered.

Day 3: 5.4.17

Ian and David stayed with me all day. I remember that more clearly than almost anything else—the steady presence of them, like anchors in a place that didn’t feel steady anymore. I wasn’t scared in the way people expect. There was no dramatic panic, no spiraling. Just a quiet, single-minded need to know what was happening inside me.

And then there was pain—sharp, real, immediate—right before I went under, like my body insisting on being heard one last time before I disappeared.

After the procedure, I slept through most of the afternoon. Not restful sleep. More like my body shutting a door it didn’t have the energy to hold open anymore.

That evening, a doctor came in.

I still remember the way he paused before he spoke. Not long enough for anyone else to notice, but long enough for me to feel it settle in the room. Hesitation has a sound when you’re the one waiting for answers.

He told me they had found “a growth” in my colon and taken a biopsy. He said it calmly, carefully, like the words could be softened if he handled them gently enough. He told me not to worry.

But I already knew what worry felt like. I had met it earlier that morning in the ER, before I even had a room—before I had a name for what was happening. Somewhere in those first hours, something in me understood the truth before I was ready to call it that. Still, beneath everything, there was this strange, unexplainable stillness. Not peace exactly—but something like surrender wrapped in faith. Like whatever came next, I wouldn’t be left alone in it.

He said they might even discharge me.

But I was still in pain. Worse than before I arrived. A deep, unrelenting pain that didn’t match the story they were telling me.

So I said no.

I wasn’t going home like that.

No one seemed to understand at first. They hadn’t realized the pain hadn’t stopped after the colonoscopy. The doctor said it was unusual—especially with medication.

Later, I learned they had nicked me during the procedure.

It’s rare. Not what usually happens. But it happened to me.

I didn’t know how to explain it in that moment except to say I couldn’t leave. My body was telling a different truth than the one on the chart.

And eventually, they listened.