I just wanted to pop in and tell you some of the non-icky details of my colonoscopy

(NOTE: This is a very long post. I'm not sure I would endure the whole thing if I were you, but I at least wanted to warn you up front.)

Hi, it's me. One time my Cleveland Foundation co-worker Jennifer Cimperman described me as "earthy," which is a word her mother apparently uses for people who aren't shy about sharing personal details. I am proudly earthy.

I should also mention that the headline is a lie. There are no details of a colonoscopy that aren't icky, but I hoped you would read the first couple of sentences before deciding whether to soldier on or bail before things got messy.

So, if you're still with me, here's how it all went down...

First, let's establish that I am a couple of weeks away from turning 52, which means I was nearly two years late when I underwent my first screening colonoscopy this past Monday. Actually, if you go by relatively new guidance from the American Cancer Society that such screening should begin at age 45, I was seven years late.

Either way, I should have done this earlier.

I didn't put it off because I was scared of the procedure, though. On the contrary, I am weirdly fascinated by new medical experiences. When I got my first root canal a few years ago, the endodontist had to politely tell me not to ask any more questions so he could actually finish the procedure.

As my wife will confirm, I was really into the specifics when it came to my colonoscopy and the associated prep.

Because of course it's the prep about which everyone has horror stories. And rightly so, given what's involved. The whole goal is to completely clean out all 5 feet of a decidedly unpleasant part of your body: your large intestine.

To do this, you abstain from all solid food the day before your procedure. You're limited to a "clear liquid" diet, which I found out doesn't mean you can only have clear-color liquids. Permissible options include broth, popsicles (no red or purple), Jello-O, sports drinks, black coffee or tea, and water. Or at least that was the stuff I had.

That in itself was a bit of a challenge, though I was never as hungry as I thought I would be.

You also have to ingest a certain amount of medicinal liquid designed to really get things moving, if you know what I mean.

It used to be that this liquid was an unpleasant, chalky potion that in and of itself was nauseating. They have apparently advanced the technology, though, because all I had to drink were two 10-ounce bottles of something clear and watery called magnesium citrate.

Now don't get me wrong. You don't want to drink magnesium citrate if you don't have to. It's not especially tasty. But I mixed it with ginger ale and it was fine (apparently the bitter taste is masked well by ginger ale or lemon-lime soda).

You don't drink this stuff all at once, either. You take in 2 ounces or so every 10 minutes, and the two bottles are consumed six hours apart. You also swallow four stool softener pills along with the first bottle.

That's all easy enough, but I still managed to screw it up. After you drink magnesium citrate, you're supposed to also drink a large amount of clear liquid, ideally water. At least four full glasses.

I forgot that part. After I finished the first bottle of magnesium citrate and took the pills, I sat back and waited for something to happen.

I waited four hours for something to happen. And nothing did.

Then I remembered the part about the water. Once I drank that copious amount of H2O, things did in fact happen.

Oh, they happened.

This is the part where I'll try and skip the icky, but suffice it to say that the sheer physics of the process are horribly illogical. And by that I mean the input/output ratio makes no sense. I think there were traces of Thanksgiving dinner 1981 that passed out of my digestive system.

What comes out way, way, way exceeds the amount of food you've taken in over, say, the past week or so. I still can't understand it.

They tell you you'll be spending a lot of time in the bathroom, and they are correct. I was up until midnight doing what I had to do to get my colon nice and clear.

SPOILER ALERT: As it turns out, I did not do a good enough job with this, and I blame the four-hour delay in drinking the water. This oversight would come to have longer-term consequences for me, as we will see below.

Anyway, there were some small aftershocks the next morning, but the bulk of the work was completed the previous day.

My procedure was scheduled for 1pm, and you're supposed to stop eating or drinking four hours prior. Which meant I was finished ingesting anything (even a breath mint) by 9am.

Interestingly, I didn't feel especially tired or weak at that point despite my meager diet of the previous 30 hours. I was actually pretty active that morning. I went and got an e-check on my car, then drove to the BMV to renew both my license and registration. I also spent an hour cutting our grass, then broke out my work laptop and did Goodyear stuff up until almost the moment we left for the endoscopy center.

You have to have someone drive you there, by the way. There's a chance you're not going to be in any condition to drive yourself home after the procedure, thanks to the anesthesia, so Terry had to come with me as I checked in so I could prove I had separate transportation.

I won't go into the boring details of how they get you ready for the actual colonoscopy other than to note the following:

• You have to remove all clothing except your socks and put on a gown that, of course, opens in the back. As I told the nurse, "Oh yeah, that makes sense."
• Speaking of the nurse, she was very pleasant. She and I share a birthday. She stuck some sensors on my shoulder/upper chest and forearm, and also inserted a needle into my hand for the IV. Nothing especially unpleasant.
• Once she left me by myself in my little hospital bed, I had to wait a long time. Or at least it felt like a long time. I thought I would go straight into the procedure room, but it was 30 minutes before they came and got me.

There were a couple of assistants in the procedure room along with the nurse anesthetist and Dr. Khatami, who served as captain of the S.S. Roto Rooter that day. They were all very pleasant despite the fact that they do something like 35 colonoscopies a day (I asked).

We made small talk for a couple of minutes before they instructed me to turn and lay on my left side and bring my knees up toward my chest, which better facilitates the procedure from an anatomical perspective, as you might imagine.

I asked the nurse to fold my pillow for me so I wasn't laying quite so flat, which she did. And that's the last thing I remember, because that was the point when I went night night.

Or at least I think that was when I went night night, since it's definitely the last thing I remember. It could be that we had more conversation and they had me count to 10 or whatever, but I don't recall anything like that happening. If it did, the memory of it was wiped out by Propofol, a wonderful anesthetic often referred to as "milk of amnesia."

I woke up back in the same curtained-off area where they had prepped me. I felt wide awake as the nurse told me my procedure was finished and asked me a couple of questions. I guess I answered them, but then, despite how I felt, I went right back to sleep.

Then I woke up again and she asked if I wanted water, and I said yes. She brought me water, I drank it, and again I fell asleep.

I woke up a third time with the empty water cup laying at my side, and this time I stayed awake. I can't describe how suddenly sleep overtook me those two times after the initial wake-up. I clearly had a good amount of Propofol still in my system.

But then I guess I was fine, because I was able to stand up and get myself dressed. I felt a little tired, but nothing too terrible.

After another wait, Dr. Khatami came by to debrief me. The good news: Everything he could see looked fine. No concerns about anything he came across while touring my colon.

The bad news: My clean-out the previous day had not been as thorough as he would have liked, even though I insisted I had followed everything to the letter except drinking that darn water. But that was apparently my downfall, because there was still a lot of "stuff" in there that prevented him from visualizing my entire large intestine.

The result? Instead of being told I was good to go and to come back again for another screening in 10 years, I was instructed to come back "in 3-4 years" so they could take another look. And, adding insult to my injured ego (I thought I had been a model patient), next time I will have to undergo a two-day prep.

Two days.

I should have known this prep had been too easy. So many other people describe the experience as miserable and exhausting. For me it had just been inconvenient, though certainly very active in terms of restroom trips.

I was even given a few photos of the inside my colon, and in a couple of them you can see areas where waste material covers what should otherwise have been the easily viewed inner lining of my intestine.

Graphic evidence of my failure as a colonoscopy subject.

Oh the shame.

We'll try it again in 2024...

This blog is on hiatus until I get the itch again

I never actually came out and said this, but when I resurrected 5kids1wife.com last November and started blogging every day, it was never meant to be a permanent thing.

I brought it back because I had a list of topics about which I wanted to write, and a few specific things I wanted to say.

Over the last 10 1/2 months, I've covered all of those topics and said every one of those things.

So now we're giving it a rest.

This sort of pause is well known to the maybe five people who have read the blog since its inception. It's what I do. I go on a blogging spurt for a year or two, then I stop.

I start doing it again whenever inspiration hits.

When that will be, I can't say. But as always, I plan to keep the domain name and occasionally check in with a random post or two as life events dictate.

Then, at some future time, I will pick it up again.

Much like playing the saxophone, I blog in fits and starts (I'm currently on a sax hiatus, too.) My focus right now is on my family, my health, my job and my PA announcing, probably just about in that order. There simply isn't time for much else.

I am grateful for the regular readers and frequent Facebook commenters. The blog gets, on average, around 300 page views per day. I honestly don't know if some of those are "bots" or other artificial/electronic views, but there are enough humans checking in that I get to hear all the time from friends, family and co-workers about how much they enjoy 5 Kids, 1 Wife.

That makes me profoundly happy.

So hey, while we're apart, do whatever you need to do to make sure that you and those around you are happy, healthy and fulfilled. Tell those people you love them, and don't forget to tell yourself every once in a while how awesome you are.

Because you really are.

Take care.

Sports remain a big part of my life but don't mean as much to me as they used to...which is just fine

One way or another, I find myself watching or attending sporting events all the time.

Some are cross country meets, where I get to see my son Jack compete. Others are soccer and volleyball matches I'm announcing, or football games where the Wickliffe Swing Band performs at halftime.

And of course there are the professional sports teams here in Cleveland whose games I will occasionally listen to on the radio or watch on TV.

The key word here is "occasionally."

For various reasons, as I approach 52 years of age, sports have changed for me in two important ways.

One is that I don't "do" pro sports to the level I once did. This is not so much an intentional decision as it is a function of a busy schedule and the fact that weekends are often devoted to catching up on the stuff I missed during the work week.

I know many people who have walked away from pro sports for political reasons. I absolutely respect their decision, but I am not one of them. My lack of engagement is just a lack of time.

Case in point: I'm typing this post early on Sunday morning, September 26th. My Cleveland Browns will take on the Chicago Bears this afternoon. I am almost certain I will watch zero minutes of the game.

In fact, do you know how many quarters of Browns football I have watched through the first two weeks of the NFL season? The answer is a fraction of one quarter. It's more accurately measured by the number of individual plays I've seen.

Again, this is nothing against the Browns, the NFL, or sports in general. I just have other things that are more important right now. (Trust me, I've been rooting for the Browns for decades and continue to be an ardent fan, as I am of the Indians/Guardians, Cavs, and my beloved Cleveland Monsters.)

Which leads to the other thing that has happened to me in recent years when it comes to sports: When I do manage to watch, I don't get as emotionally invested as I once did.

As Terry will tell you, I have been known to scream at the TV and at the world in general while watching a Browns game. Not so much anymore.

For one thing, it's silly to get worked up over a sporting event, particularly if it doesn't involve your child or a close friend. I am a big believer in the power of sports fandom to be a social connector and a fun hobby, but that should be the extent of it.

Writer Terry Pluto often tells fans never to let the millionaires ruin their day, and he's absolutely right.

Again, none of this means I'm no longer interested in sports. The sports section of the two newspapers to which I subscribe is the first thing I read every morning. And heck, I announce several dozen high school and college events every year. It's not like I can get away from them.

But I think about sports differently now. I have gone from the being the guy who could earnestly write about the nobility of sports fandom (you can read that blog post from December 2011 here) to someone who is maybe a bit better equipped to put athletics – professional or otherwise – into their proper perspective.

I'm not sure whether that means I've matured or am just a boring old person. Either way, I've got a family to spend time with and chores to do, man. Ain't nobody got time for the rest.

Facebook has put a big dent into class reunions, and maybe that's not a bad thing

One of the biggest mistakes I made in high school was running for and holding a class officer position.

I was treasurer of our class for, I think, three of the four years of high school. This turned out not to be the best move because (a) I wasn't especially dedicated to the job, relative to the other activities in which I participated, and (b) It came with a lifelong commitment to organize class reunions of which I was wholly ignorant.

There are high school reunions that get planned and executed by non-class officers all the time. But more often than not, I would say, the officers are at least involved if not outright leading the effort.

Thus, once every five years I start hearing from classmates asking if we're going to have a reunion for that particular post-graduation milestone. I think we've done something, formal or informal, at every 5-year increment since we left Wickliffe High School in 1988.

The last one we did was our 30th in the summer of 2018. Attendance was so-so, but those of us who were there had a great time.

There are many reasons why people don't attend reunions, not the least of which is that they didn't particularly enjoy their high school years or their classmates, or both. Others really don't like the way they look or have other motives for staying away, which is obviously perfectly fine.

The most common thing I hear is, "I keep up with the people I want to keep up with and don't really need to see anyone else."

Which, again, is completely fine.

Another big factor in lackluster reunion attendance is social media, and here I'm thinking specifically of Facebook.

At least half if not more of my 160+ classmates are on Facebook, and those are generally the people whose lives I know the most about.

I enjoy the opportunity to sit down and talk with them face to face, but it's not like I need that time to find out if they're married, if they have kids, what those kids are up to, where they've living, where they're working, etc.

For the most part, I already know that stuff thanks to Mark Zuckerberg's online creation.

If people want to continue having face-to-face get-togethers every half-decade, the other class officers and I will continue to arrange them.

But if we get to the point that everyone decides they've had their fill of the folks whose photos are next to theirs in the yearbook, I'll admit having one less thing on my plate – even if it's very occasional – isn't the worst thing in the world.

Board games and what they reveal about you

NOTE: I originally wrote this post nearly 10 years ago. I think it still holds up, particularly when it comes to what our favorite board games say about us.

We're a board game kind of family.

And by "board" game, I don't just mean the ones where you roll a dice and move a little piece around a sheet of pressed cardboard, though Lord knows we have dozens of those. I also mean checkers, chess, cribbage, Scrabble, and Yahtzee, and oodles and oodles of card games.

In our downstairs storage room is a seven-foot cabinet filled top to bottom with almost every game you can imagine. We never lack for choices.

One reason we like board games is because we like winning. If there's one thing I've passed down to my kids, it's a competitive streak. I like to win. They like to win. There is little mercy expected and almost none shown during one of our family board game sessions.

You might think, "But isn't it about having fun?" And we would respond, "Yes, but isn't the greatest kind of fun seeing an opponent land on Boardwalk and Park Place when you own them with hotels, and watching the other person burst into tears as they hand over the small fortune in Monopoly money they've spent 2 1/2 hours accumulating?"

We like to play virtually anything, but there's a subtle message conveyed in the specific board game you select. Like the car you drive or the clothes you wear, a board game says something about you. Here's what I'm talking about:

CLUE
People who like to play Clue are violent sociopaths. They have no interest in free-market real estate (Monopoly), choosing a career and raising a family (Life), or out-and-out lying (Balderdash). They want a game that involves the gruesome bludgeoning or stabbing death of a rich guy, and the subsequent trial, conviction and execution of the murderer (who, by the way, always seems to be Colonel Mustard when I play). Be careful, because if you beat them at Clue, they're liable to reenact the murder scene with you playing the part of Mr. Boddy.

BATTLESHIP
Battleship is a game of luck. Winning is random, unless you're playing a little kid who packs their ships into that compact "I have no idea what I'm doing" square of doom. I'm not saying that being a good Battleship player is the equivalent of being a good slot machine player, but....well, yes, actually I am saying that. They're both hit and miss. But hey, there's no shame in the fact that you lack deductive reasoning or any other socially redeemable skills.

MONOPOLY
Like Monopoly? Then you're a cheater. Yes, you heard me, you're a cheater. No honest person genuinely enjoys Monopoly, because an honestly played game of Monopoly takes 14 hours. The game only ends in a reasonable amount of time if the banker is giving himself interest-free loans on the sly, or if someone else grabs a deed they didn't pay for in order to complete a monopoly ("Wait, you have Marvin Gardens? I don't remember you buying that." "Oh yeah, it was an hour ago. You must not have noticed.") You might be saying, "Well, I never do either of those. I don't cheat at Monopoly." Yeah? Do you do that thing where you put money on Free Parking and give it to the next person who lands there? Then you're a cheater. It's not in the rules. Look it up.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT
If Trivial Pursuit is your first choice, you're an insufferable, overly competitive know-it-all. I should know, because I'M an insufferable, overly competitive know-it-all, and Trivial Pursuit is always my first choice. Why? Because I know that in most (though certainly not all) cases, I'll destroy you. My mind is filled with useless knowledge. Rarely is it of much use unless I'm playing Trivial Pursuit or appearing on the occasional television game show. Never play Trivial Pursuit with someone who wants to play Trivial Pursuit, that's my advice to you.

CHESS, CHECKERS, SCRABBLE, BOGGLE, STRATEGO AND ANY OTHER OF THOSE GAMES I'M NOT VERY GOOD AT
People who choose these games are all smarter than me. I can do random trivia, sure, but that's no indication of intelligence. That's just having a photographic memory and the gift of instant recall. These are games of strategy that require clear thinking, a quick mind, and the ability to anticipate your opponent's moves. I lack those skills, and the people who have them are exactly what I want to be when I grow up. But let me get them on the other side of a Candyland board and I'll wipe the floor with them. I have five kids, man. I'll be past Queen Frostine and on my way to victory before they even know what hit them.

Another winter of potential injury looms

I've always considered it a point of pride that I get outside to walk/run/amble year-round, regardless of the conditions.

This is easy during Northeast Ohio summers, which at worst are maybe a touch warm and humid at 5:30 in the morning when I'm out there.

It is another matter in mid-January, when we have stretches that make you think we live in Alaska.

It's admittedly a bit early to be thinking about this, but in a couple of short months, most of my morning constitutionals will be taken over the frozen and slippery pavement of Miller Avenue and West Miller Road. These conditions make for treacherous movement on flat ground, but throw in the two big hills on this loop and it gets even hairier.

In the 18+ years we've lived in this neighborhood, I've fallen three times while exercising. And only one of those left a mark, which was a black eye I wore proudly for a week or so. The other two times I just laughed about it.

It's generally safer for me now that I walk more than jog, but it's still power walking, and I still try to keep a pretty fast pace when I can.

The obvious solution is to buy a treadmill, and we've talked about that. But the only place to really put it is in our basement, which has very low ceilings. You can buy low-deck models for this type of scenario, but none I've come across seem to be of especially good quality.

Plus, while I do go on hotel treadmills when traveling, I find them to be absolutely soul-sucking. I would much, much rather be outside, even if there's risk of a tumble.

Of course, I say that now at age 51. Check back with me in 20 years.

A few more falls and I'm likely to have a different answer by then.