It’s my 47th birthday today, so I kicked off the celebration last week with the funnest thing someone my age can gift themselves:
A colonoscopy!
Colorectal cancer was the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. last year — and the toll is now skewing younger. Since 2021, the official recommendation has been to get screened starting at age 45 instead of 50, whether it’s an at-home test or a full-on camera where the sun don’t shine.
The damned disease especially plagues Mexican American men like me, and many aren’t getting screened. Only 46% of us hombres are up to-date, compared with 60% of white men, 61% of Puerto Ricans and 49% of Central and South Americans, according to the American Cancer Society.
The stats are even worse when it comes to people in my age range: only 9% of Mexican Americans between 45 and 49 have checked in on our colons, compared with 20% of our white peers.
The American Cancer Society cites “structural racism, a higher likelihood of poverty and language barriers.” The reason why I delayed was more straightforward:
Por pendejo.
My career at The Times started as my mother was dying of ovarian cancer after years of doctors dismissing her health concerns. I lost dear classmates to leukemia when I was an undergraduate at Chapman University 25 years ago. Random abdominal pains have afflicted me since college — the price of a stressful job, I always figured.
Yet when my doctor set up a colonoscopy two years ago, after I turned 45, I let the date pass. When she mailed me an at-home test, I let it expire.
The idea of a tube up my tuchus didn’t scare me, nor did the notorious prep of drinking a foul-tasting liquid to cleanse your intestinal tract. I just didn’t think I needed a colonoscopy yet — and I always had an excuse ready.
Too busy because of work. Yearly physicals that I passed with few red flags. I eat relatively healthfully. While I do love my Manhattans, I don’t drink like I used to. I don’t work out much, but the pounds nevertheless stay off. Besides, high cholesterol is the bane of men in my family, not cancer — so why worry?
In November, my doctor gently reprimanded me for ignoring my 2024 colonoscopy date. Fine. Two days at home and a columna out of it? It’s a living.
The earliest appointment available through my provider was in September, or I could go out of network at no extra cost. Part of me wanted to delay for the usual reasons. Then I remembered it’s an election year, and I should probably be covering the midterms in their final weeks instead of pooping my brains out.
I let the Mexiclan —what I call the text chat with my closest guy friends — know what I was about to do. Memes citing the farting scene from “Blazing Saddles” and others too rude to mention in a family newspaper immediately befouled my phone.
Then came the sobering reality that we’re no longer young men.
“I need to do that, too,” texted my cousin Plas.
“That’ll be me in April,” his brother Vic chimed in.
“We will all bow out someday but hopefully not anytime soon,” added Art, a friend since junior high who’s the Mexiclan’s resident Aristotle.
My dad, who survived the removal of tumors in his testicles 30 years apart, drove me to a clinic in Orange on Friday.
“They just give you anesthesia and then you sleep,” Papi said in Spanish, recalling the time he underwent his sole colonoscopy about 15 years ago. “And then you wake up and they tell you, ‘Relax, relax. It’s going to be OK.’”
Why hadn’t he gotten any more?
“My doctor never said to do another one,” he said. “So it’s good they’re making young people do it now. You’re young! You’ll be fine.”
There’s a whole genre of colonoscopy dispatches, from Katie Couric to Dave Barry, describing the procedure in language better suited for covering Fallujah or “Fear Factor.” But it’s nowhere near as dramatic as people make it out to be.
Yes, gulping the liquid the night before was an ordeal — try drinking three liters of anything in three hours, going to sleep, then waking up six hours later for one final liter. But pharmacists gave me a powder that made it taste and smell like citrus blossom water — I think it would pair well with mezcal. Sure, I couldn’t be more than a few steps away from a toilet — but what followed was just nature taking its course, albeit with the dial turned to 11.
I filled out some paperwork, changed into a backless gown, lay on a bed covered in a warm blanket and waited my turn by softly singing rancheras and Beatles songs. Patients were wheeled in and out of the colonoscopy room with the efficiency of a conveyor belt.
The doctor introduced himself, and an anesthesiologist did his thing. A nurse asked me to turn on my side, and then everything went black.
The colonoscopy took half an hour, and I felt nothing. My only complaint: the medical team was working to “Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. While I get that everyone in the room was likely a Gen Xer and the song is a masterpiece, the last thing I needed to hear at that moment was Anthony Kiedis wailing about his drug days.
Soon after I woke up, a nurse asked me to put on my clothes — more people were waiting to go next. As she rolled me out in a wheelchair, I read the sheet of paper someone had handed me. The anesthesia hadn’t worn off, so I didn’t understand anything except a word I was hoping not to see:
Polyps. Three of them.
The nurse said the doctor had successfully removed the growths and was sending them off for biopsies.
“Should I be concerned?” I remember mumbling.
She replied that the doctor would have immediately talked to my father and me if he had found visible malignancies, but that the biopsy would say more.
I began to silently curse myself on the way home. I should have gotten a colonoscopy when my doctor suggested it a year and a half ago. I should have requested another home kit, at the very least. And I 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?” Papi 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 could turn 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 Mexiclan was similarly supportive.
“Had [a colonoscopy] early last year,” Art texted. “Took out a few small polyps. Have to do another every five years instead of 10.”
“I had a similar thing happen and have to have one every three years,” Dave replied.
The Butcher — we call him that because that was his profession before retiring after surviving Stage 4 colon cancer 15 years ago — had the best words of comfort. He posted a GIF of a man screaming “All Good!!!” while poking his head through a clean pipe.
I laughed at the Mexiclan’s commentary as I tried to focus on the good. Two small polyps were flat — harder to detect and more prone to turn into cancer, so thank God the doctor caught them. Another was 10 millimeters — a size when gastroenterologists start to truly worry because larger polyps are more likely to turn into something bad.
Happy birthday, indeed.
I get the biopsy results in about a week. For now, I continue to study the photos of my polyps like they’re the Rosetta Stone and find solace that I asked for the earlier colonoscopy instead of the later one.
My hope is that I come out OK, of course. I also hope that others read this and realize they shouldn’t delay something so simple — and so essential.
Hopefully, I stopped being a pendejo before it was too late.
