Having successfully reached the ripe old age of 50, the time
has come for another exciting test.
As if smashing my boobs wasn’t enough fun, now I get to participate in
the next right of passage, the Fecal Occult Blood test.
A precursor to the dreaded colonoscopy, the FOB test checks
for blood in feces unseen by the naked eye. Having now had two neighbors diagnosed with colon cancer, I
thought it best to have a lookie at my poop to see what lurks within.
I thought I was a reasonably intelligent woman who was
thankful that English was my first language, until the nurse practioner started
explaining how to collect “the samples” as polite people often refer to this. Place the paper in the toilet bowl. Check. Go poo poos onto
the paper. Check. Take the little
stick out of the very small test tube thingy and stab the poo. Put it back in the teeny tiny test tube
thing. You lost me.
I don’t want to brag or anything, but the average size of my
feces greatly exceeds the size of the test tube thingy. Any decent Sesame
Street math whiz could clearly see that one of these things is bigger and NOT
like the other.
The look of confusion on my face was apparent. She explained again, this time more s-l-o-w-l-y. I could only conclude that the stick
thing was going to take more of a “core” sample, otherwise this was going to
get ugly!
I decided it best to give the printed instructions a thorough
going over. The instructions come
with cute, IKEA style diagrams.
For some reason the diagram next to the instruction “deposit stool
sample on top of collection paper” shows a relaxed naked person on the toilet
wearing nothing but red (I’m assuming fuzzy) slippers. Hmm. Note to self.
Clothing optional. Maybe
this IS going to get ugly after all.
It appears from the instructions that I am to pull the probe
across the sample until there is a goodly amount on the grooved portion of the
probe. I’m thinking that this is
going to be an interesting game of bobbing for apples and wonder if when
collecting my sample, it might be best to take paper out of the toilet and onto
a more solid surface. Starting to
have performance anxiety, I consult the internet for further details.
The internet seems to confirm that the paper is best left in
the toilet. We’ll see. The last
thing I want to do is fail this test and have to get back into that lengthy
line-up at the lab. Not to mention face the nurse practioner yet again and have
her think I was a complete moron.
What they didn’t tell me at either the doctor’s office or at
the lab is this: FOB tests are prone to false positives. Eating certain fruits and vegetables
prior to your test or taking things like aspirin and ibuprofen can skew the
results, meaning that a further colonoscopy will be performed in order to double
check. The only reason I’ve agreed
to do this test is to avoid the colonoscopy (although I hear the drugs are
great!).
Having been taking vast amounts of ibuprofen lately for a
recent back problem, I decide to wait for a few days. I’m hoping that by then, I’ll be ready to don fuzzy slippers
and take a stab at it. Literally.
