“She was tired of being embarrassed by the things her body did or did not do without her conscious input in the decision.” – emily m. danforth, “Plain Bad Heroines”

I wake up at 5 a.m. to mix the drink. I sit in the partial dark, drinking Suflave with a straw. A new timer goes off each 15 minutes, telling me to do it again. My stomach rumbles. Oh, how it rumbles.

Today is my first colonoscopy. Yes, I am sharing the story before it is complete. But I also believe that this piece of the experience — the prep, the intentionally making yourself sick — is the one that people are most afraid of. Including myself.

Could it be that most of our irrational fears begin in childhood? My intense fear of vomiting started in preschool. Mind you, I didn’t vomit myself. But I was wearing a snappy blue sweatsuit with satin planets sewn on. It was my favorite sweatsuit.

A girl named [REDACTED, IT’S SUCH A UNIQUE NAME THAT I WOULD DIE IF YOU RECOGNIZED YOURSELF HERE] and I were walking alongside the plastic bins that tame the beads and Duplos and shit. These were the final moments of my beloved sweatsuit. I believed it to be irreplaceable. That said, it probably came from J.C. Penney. I was neither in a position to understand this, nor to take myself shopping. To appreciate the fleeting and cyclical nature of possessions was above my skillset. This is fine. I was young. So young.

In a moment I believed to be without warning, [REDACTED] proceeded to vomit all over me.

This was the moment when my fear of throwing up locked in. I don’t know how to explain it, but I loved my sweatsuit with the satin planets. It was simultaneously comfortable, practical, and jazzy. And my sweatsuit with the satin planets was ruined.

Also ruined? My previously implicit trust in the orderly.

Whatever its origin story, my fear of the unruly gastrointestinal is not particularly unique, I guess. No one really likes acid out the front or a mess out the back. It doesn’t feel good, and it is a physical manifestation of how out of our control our bodies actually are.

I write, as I wait for burbling abdomen to take over.

This morning is my second round of prep. I did one last night. The truth is, it went fine. My flashbacks to the cloying gestational diabetes test drink from pregnancy were not instructive: I have not had difficulty choking the colonoscopy prep solution down. Nor has the inevitable result been nearly as dramatic as suggested by other people with anxiety on the internet.

Now that I have hurdled the fence of my initial resistance, I’m casting my net wider, to the societal level. Why such a taboo about our bodies, and this colonoscopy test in particular? Literally everyone has a body that acts more or less the same way. I am not advocating for the crass. But who does it serve, when we are made to fear and loathe the normal and natural?

A crappy day or two is nothing, compared to cancer prevention.