Is This a Spa or a Medical Facility? A Canadian's View on US Medical Procedures

Things sure are different in the good ol' USA when it comes to mid-lifin'-it medical exams. I scheduled a routine colonoscopy, as I currently have insurance that pays for it, and who knows how long I will stay at my present occupation? I also asked for an endoscopy. Why not get the whole digestive system approved as road-worthy for another 10 years?

The day before a colonoscopy is the day before, whether your are in the north of Canada or Florida. No food, clear liquids only, and those revolting preparation formulas one has to drink, which marry one to the toilet for the rest of the afternoon and evening. Exhausting. Not only that, but I did not finish drinking the second batch of this overly salty, lemon-lime liquid, resulting in my having to have another colonoscopy in 3 years instead of 10. It is a day that sticks in the memory, especially if you like your three squares a day as I do, and the results of the lack of food are an increase in anxiety and, in my case, hypochondria, which does well enough on a normal day. I mean, just WHAT are they going to find?

At 6:30 the morning of my procedures, I felt as though I was checking into a spa and not a medical facility. I got undressed, put on a gown, a hairnet-type cap, slippers with non-stick bottoms. They looked like socks to me - socks with a design on them. I put them on carefully arranging the "design" on top of my foot, until I heard the nurse telling a young man across the way he would be getting "slip-proof socks". I quickly turned the "design" so it was under my foot before I was too stoned to do so. (Vanity thy name is Woman, and yes, I fully admit to wearing mascara, despite the fact that my face was far from the areas of concern to the doctor.)

Then came the IV drip. "Food?" I asked nervously. "Oh no," smiled the medical assistant. "This is to hydrate you after all that preparation you drank yesterday." I was approaching freak-out mode internally, due to what seemed like excessive attention and fuss compared to my experience in Canada, but maintained my cool exterior saying how different it was up there. "Like how?" Asks the anaesthesiologist. "You go in," I replied, "Get undressed, don the gown, and hop onto the table, get a shot in the arm of whatever and then it's over. No frills...no cap, certainly no slippers..." "Yeh," says he, "such is socialized medicine. Welcome to the USA." (In reality, it's welcome to the USA IF you have medical insurance or are over 65!!)

Before they added the "mild drug" to the liquid in the iv, they told me they were doing the endoscopy first. By then I was ready to get up and walk away, my palms sweaty from all the hand shaking with so many different people, each informing me what I could expect. I anounced that I was more nervous from all the attention and drug-giving than of the actual procedures. I then said that, in Canada, they do not give you anything for an endoscopy, simply spray the back of your throat with a numbing substance and, when you turn into nothing less than a wild animal once the scope hits the back of your throat, and you start fighting them thinking you are suffocating, they push you down and simply say "Be calm and breathe through your nose". The nurse, my only audience by this time as the others were bustling about with various cords and tending to machines, muttered shaking her head, "And they want socialized medicine in this country. It will never work." She then put oxygen in my nostrils and said, "You won't be having anyone telling you to breathe here, Hon, this'll do it for you." "By the way," she added, "Before I sedate you, you can choose to watch the colonoscopy on tv, but you risk "feeling things"." I passed on the movie and was out in 10 seconds or less. Way out.

And this from a person who delivered two daughters without drugs or medicine. Yes, in Canada.

I woke up in a recovery room in what seemed like hours later, with others having endured the same, but realized only 10-15 minutes had passed. Sitting up, I told the nurse I wanted the bathroom. "No, you don't," she says. "It's the air they pump in you. Just fart." (WHAT? In public? Not bloody likely!) No, I said firmly, "Trust me, I can get to that room." Reluctantly, she let me get up a bit taken aback that I was "sober" so quickly. (Little did she know my level of vanity and stoicism, having been brought up by an upper-class British mother.) I felt very wobbly but kept my eyes on the horizon (i.e. that bathroom door!!), a trick I learned to stop seasickness when aboard a ship.

They tell you not to drive for 24 hours and that I can understand, because at noon I still felt like someone had slipped something into my martini the night before. Of course I capitalized on that fact and took the afternoon off.

All in all, I would rate the experience a four and a half out five. I take off a half because having been through both procedures before in Canada, where you are given only the smallest amount of sedation for the colonoscopy alone, at least you can enjoy the rest of your day feeling like yourself.

But if I had to chose in which country I would repeat these procedures?

The U.S. of course. It was the slippers that did it.