This Week's Sneak Peek

I had to undergo a routine colonoscopy last week. The procedure itself isn't so bad; they drug you so that you don't remember any of it.

The worst part, of course, is having to chug a gallon of this stuff called GoLytely that makes you completely clean out your bowels. By the gallon. You can flavor the jug, but I don't recommend it. I added lime flavoring to it my first time, and it put me off anything lime flavored for months afterward. Personally, I recommend taking a few drops of honey, but only when the GoLytely aftertaste is making it a challenge to keep quaffing the stuff on schedule.

The second worst part, this time, was having three nurses take turns poking holes in my hands and arms in search of a vein. My procedure was scheduled in the mid afternoon, by which time I was thoroughly dehydrated. My husband, a recently retired nurse, could only watch and offer suggestions, which can only have been frustrating for him. He's generally one to step in and take over, not sit by and advise.

The third worst part was trying not to listen to the patient in the next partition, separated only by a curtain as thin as a bedsheet. She was the patient ahead of me, and she was adamant that she not receive any transfusions of "vaccinated blood." Seriously.

Her nurse tried telling her that the hospital doesn't separate donated blood according to vaccination status, but Mrs. Virginia Pureblood insisted that she had had her GP put on her chart that she didn't want any vaccinated blood polluting her purity of essence, and she had made sure that they noted that at the intake desk, too.

I wouldn't be surprised if she had ordered a testing kit from the MyPillow guy to make sure they weren't sneaking vaccines into her GoLytely. (Trust me: nothing in that stuff is staying in your body long enough to vaccinate you against anything.)

One hopes that she hasn't convinced some Republican wingnut in the state legislature or Congress to author a bill mandating separation of vaccinated and vaccine-free blood supplies. Heck, what are the chances that it's not already the law someplace where Drawl is the Official State Language?