It will be a sketch. It won’t be a fully drafted and re-drafted finished piece of artwork, it will be a snapshot of my creative process and the idea as it flows to me. It’s my raw creative output.

Got an idea? Got something crazy you want me to sketch up for you? Send me a message @saltmarsh on Twitter or via the comments on this thread. Or if you’re confident in my skills just PayPal the money to salty@ozprog.com and leave your idea in a note with your payment.

I will complete your sketch within 7 days of receiving your payment and send you a scan or photo of it before I package it up and send it to you.

Let’s go! Get my creative juices flowing!

So the days have been counting down to today, the day that I went into hospital to have a generous length of hi-tech medical imaging equipment inserted into my “back passage” as they keep referring to it, they being the medical professionals, to see if I have anything going on in my bowels that could be contributing to why I had a slightly low blood count a while ago. Some earlier tests showed that I had some blood in one of my bowel movements and my doctor essentially scared the life out of me by telling me that it meant I had cancer until they could tell me I don’t have cancer.

Let’s go back a day or so to the evening of June 18th 2012. I sat here in my living room drinking a cup of coffee and partaking in a couple of Milk Arrowroot biscuits, one of the foods I was allowed to have on my low residue diet that had been going on for five days at this point. What’s a low residue diet you may ask? Well it essentially means you can only eat food that is heavily refined or doesn’t contain much fibre. White bread, refined pasta, white rice, canned fruit with no skin, baked chicken and fish and some things like ham and certain vegetables if they’re cooked right. It’s a pretty boring diet. Being a lover of grainy breads I found the blandness of white bread to be almost torturous.

I went to Subway for lunch one day and determined that a foot long tuna on white bread with just Swiss cheese, lettuce and some mayo had just about the least amount of fibre I could put on a sammich. It turned out that it also contained the least amount of taste in a sammich too. Bland city. My second foray into Subway entailed having a foot long white again, this time however I went for double ham, Swiss cheese and lettuce with mayo and it was much more tasty.

But anyway you don’t really care that much about my low residue diet, just rest easy knowing that it was pretty bland and didn’t include much fun tasty stuff.

So I’m drinking my coffee and having my biscuits thinking about the days to come. The next day I couldn’t eat anything. All I could have was non-solid food that was clear and had no bits of anything in it. Things like clear broth and the like. I just decided not to eat at all until the procedure. The next day rolled around and at 3pm my bowel preparation started. This was something I wasn’t looking forward to as I had done some reading on the internet about the foul tasting stuff I would have to drink, followed by the hours of really intense and violent diarrhea. The reason you have to do this is so that when they put the camera up there, it’s all clean and they can see everything.

Let’s not beat around the bush here. The first prep drink was actually quite nice. It had a lemony flavour and tasted just like those powdered drinks like Salvital. I remember my grandma always making us drink a glass of Salvital before bed when we were kids. It’s just a really non-offensive lemony fizzy drink. I was very pleased with the first step. I had to drink two glasses of that stuff an hour after each other. Then an hour later I started on the other preparation fluid. A substance that has no right to exist on this planet, let alone be consumed by human folk.

Let me try and explain this horrible stuff. You mix it up in the morning and put it in the fridge. You put it in the fridge because when it’s cold it’s supposed to be much more palatable. I wish I could say this was true, but I didn’t actually taste any of it at any other temperatures except straight out of the fridge.

The taste. All I can really think that it tastes like is really dirty sea water. It tastes like salt, but not extremely salty. It’s just absolutely gross. You start on that and then every 15 minutes or so you have a cup of it until it’s all gone. All 2 litres of horrid stuff.

Within the time that you start making your way through this stuff it starts working, and oh boy does it work.

I was actually expecting it to be a bit more full on. It gave me diarrhea which after the drink was all consumed had turned from actual liquid crap to just liquid. What you put in is essentially what comes out and when you reach that point you’ve effectively prepared your bowels for a colonoscopy.

So I did all of that prep the night before and went to bed. The day of the actual procedure you can’t have anything at all go in your mouth and into your body. No food, no drink. So the coffee and biscuits I had on the evening of the 18th of June would have to do me until I come out of my procedure on the 20th of June which was sometime after 12:30pm.

I arrived at the hospital just before 12:30 completely cleaned on the inside and really hungry and thirsty. Went through the process of being admitted and made my way up to the Day Procedure ward with Kylie who was an absolute trooper today helping me out and sticking by me in hospital when I needed someone to hang out with and chat to.

After a long wait in the waiting room I was called into the ward and went through the questions and tests they do before they send you to another area to wait for ages. I had my blood pressure taken which was quite high. The first time the nurse took it it was around 176/96. She took it again and it was a tad lower at around 156/96 which is still quite high. Anyway I got given my ties-at-the-back hospital gown and a hospital issue dressing gown (my stylish getup is pictured to the right) and was taken to a bed on the ward where I could wait. Other patients had been sent back out into the waiting room to wait in their gowns, I think I was probably given special treatment because they knew the gown and dressing gown were just a tad small and short for me given my height and size and didn’t want my cock and balls hanging out in the waiting room. So I was taken to the bed they had for me (a larger than normal one I found out, again because of my size) and Kylie was brought in to sit with me and hang out until I was taken into theatre.

It seemed like I was there for ages before nurses started coming in and getting me ready. I had my right hand and arm wrapped in a warm blanket to try and help bring up veins in my hand for the cannula to go into for the anesthetic and heart monitoring sticky things placed on my chest to monitor my heart throughout the procedure. Eventually the nurses came and wheeled me away to the operating theatre where they said I’d be given my anesthetic instead of the anesthetic room because the bed I had wouldn’t fit in that room. So I was told not to worry about it, I would still be given the sedation even though I’d be taken straight into the theatre. I should hope so! Below you can see me in all my waiting-to-be-wheeled-to-certain-doom glory.

This is the part that I was most worried about. Laying in the operating room, getting an anesthetic and having a long camera stuck up inside of me. Turns out this is where the story gets quite boring.

I was laying there on my side. My bottom stuck out and my legs raised up as if I was sitting in a chair. I had an IV going into my hand and could see the anesthesiologist stick a needle into the IV line and start injecting something. I heard a nurse say something like “OK I’m going to lower the bed now.” and then I woke up in recovery. It was seriously that fast. I feel directly asleep, remember nothing of what happened and woke up in recovery still laying on my side with a nurse standing next to me talking to the anesthesiologist.

He was handing her my chart and they were talking about the procedure and i heard him say four words that I had been dying to hear. “No biopsies, no polyps.”. The nurse walked away and in my still waking up haze said to him “Did you just say no biopsies and no polyps?”. He confirmed that he did say that. I was so happy. The nurse came back after he left and I asked her the same question, “did he say no biopsies and no polyps?”. She also confirmed that was what he said. I then fired out the question I’d also been dying to ask which was “Is there any chance I could have a copy of it or see it?”. The nurse told me that there was no recording of it and the doctor didn’t need to take any photos from in there, so there was nothing for me to see. This to me can only be a good thing right? They looked in my bowels and found no polyps, nothing suspicious that they wanted to take a biopsy of and even nothing that looked suspicious enough to take a photo of. That’s awesome!

I was left to snooze and come around some more for a bit and then had my clothes brought to me. I got dressed and was walked through to the second recovery area where i was met by a lovely young nurse called Kasey who brought me a cup of coffee, some sammiches and an apple juice. She was my hero. She did some final tests including taking my blood pressure again which was once again very high. I think it was around 180/90 something but she said that during the procedure it was right up to 200/100 and raged from around 180/100 to 200/100 the whole time which she said is actually quite seriously high. That’s pretty scary but it had come down some after recovery so I wasn’t riding that high all the time. She said that the fact that I was in hospital and probably stressed quite a bit could have contributed to it being high, but the fact that it was super high for the whole procedure was a bit of a worry so when I get my letter and do a follow up with my GP I should have him check out my blood pressure and see if I need to go on some medication to keep it in check. She said that it is very easy to keep under control, so I’m sure I’ll be able to get it sorted.

I’ve decided that once the stress of our move is over with, as we’re still moving while I type this I really need to get back to trying to get healthier. Start walking again, start cooking great healthy food. I really let it all go to shit when I started stressing about this cancer thing and then we were told we had to move out of our house after 8 years which was horrible. So I figure that now we have an awesome new place to live, I’m starting an awesome new job in a couple of weeks, I really need to start having a better outlook on life and taking care of myself. If having to have a six foot long camera inserted into my body and being told I have scary high blood pressure isn’t enough to really kick me in the arse and do something about my health I can’t imagine what will. So it’s time to get back on the walkies train, start eating better and use the new home and new job to help me want a new me too.

I don’t only really want to do it, I really need to do it.

Let’s do it.

I really would encourage anyone who may have a family history of bowel cancer to make sure that you get yourself checked up. Don’t just rush out and get a colonoscopy, but certainly discuss it with your GP and make sure you assess the risk that you may be in with your family history and take the best steps you can towards prevention. I was so stressed out about this whole procedure and was figuratively and literally shitting myself leading up to it but you know what? I didn’t even know it happened to me because I slept through the whole thing. It’s not as scary as it sounds and taking the day or so to prepare and then half a day to get it done is really worth the peace of mind.

Edit – 25/6/12 - I got the letter from the specialist today that has gone to my GP which reads as follows. As you can imagine I’m more than happy -

“Mr Saltmarsh underwent a colonoscopy this afternoon. I am pleased to report that the procedure itself was technically straight forward and there were no abnormalities detected. The patient will be instructed to make a further appointment to come back and see you for his ongoing follow up.”

My appointment was at Redcliffe Hospital at the specialist outpatient clinic which to me sounds really imposing to begin with. I arrived appropriately early and went through all of the things you have to do to sign in and register as being there to see the doctor. Obviously my Medicare card wouldn’t swipe through the automated check in system so I had to go to the window and speak to a human. She got me all checked in and sent me off to the “purple” waiting room. I took a seat and waited. And waited. And waited some more.

I had been chewing some gum and while I was waiting it reached that stage where it had no more flavour and I was just chewing a wad of sticky horrible shit. I started wondering what I was going to do with it as there were a few people waiting there with me and I wasn’t going to just jam it under the seat. Just as I noticed a big bin on the other side of the hall one of the many doors opened and I heard the call of “Mr Saltmarsh?”. I walked to the door and casually flipped my gum off into the bin with style. Off to a good start.

I went in and the doctor insisted on calling me Mr Saltmarsh even after I reminded him that my name was Sir, but I thought I’d let it slide. I sat down and we got down to business.

The doctor had my referral and test results in front of him as I sat down and his first comment and question threw me for a spin straight away. He said something along the lines of “So I see your doctor ordered three occult blood stool samples, but I have no idea really why he did that…”. He said it with the tone of a question as if he was asking me if I knew why I’d had that test done. He said “Is it because your blood count was a bit low?”. I told him that was correct, that because my blood count was a percentage of a percentage below the minimum ‘normal’ count he did the test to see if I was losing blood that way.

He asked me if I had had any other symptoms or problems with my bowels or bowel movements or stomach or anything to which I answered in the negative. He asked about my family history with bowel cancer, to which the only relative I know who had it was my grandma.

He explained a bit about the occult blood test and how it’s done to check for blood when blood isn’t visible to the naked eye, and thus it’s a very sensitive test. He said that the fact that only one of my samples had come back positive was a good sign and that because my known family history wasn’t immediate, I’d had no other symptoms or problems at all and the fact that I’m only 32 all works in my favour. This is where it gets good.

He said that while he can’t say it’s nothing, because young people with no symptoms DO get bowel cancer, he said that all of the facts of the case that he can see from where we’re at right now lead him to be very very positive about it and he said that he would be “very surprised” if the colonoscopy showed up anything “sinister”.

I swear if you had seen me sitting there you would have seen my shoulders un-slump some as if you could see the gigantic weight of stress being lifted off my shoulders.

He said that he would absolutely still aggressively investigate it and go ahead with the colonoscopy as soon as possible. So I should expect to have it done within the next four to six weeks. I’ll have to go in for an appointment before I get it done where the nurses will explain to me what will happen on the day and give me everything I need to prepare my body. I’m dreading this part a little bit actually.

From what I understand there’s a whole load of horrible liquid that you have to drink that basically makes you shit out the entire inside of your body. You do that the day/night before so that on the day of the procedure your bowels are completely empty.

A couple of things made me laugh. One was when he was explaining the colonoscopy he said that they “take a long thin METAL…wait no…not metal, I meant to say flexible…tube with a camera on it.”. Whew!

The second thing was on the consent forms I had to sign for the procedure, it had a list of all of the side effects and unlikely complications that could occur during it. It was so thorough it even explained that I could get a “dead-arm” from laying on my side for ages haha. I actually laughed out loud in there when I read that.

So that’s where I’m at. I feel a lot less stressed about it all. Obviously there’s still some stress because it could still be something horrible, but the specialist has put my mind somewhat at ease with his positivity which has done a lot of goodness for my head. My mental health was also helped a lot the other day by visiting the baby animal farm. Check this blog to check out a video full of cuteness.

I’ll keep this blog updated with all this as it happens. I wonder if I can get a copy of my colonoscopy on DVD? Anyone know?

It’s no secret that I absolutely LOVE animals and when I saw Natalie mention that she might be organising a baby animal zoo I was 100% committed to being there wherever it took place. I mean come on, it’s a bunch of baby animals running around that you can play with and feed! Who wouldn’t be excited about such a thing? I dare say anyone who wouldn’t love to just sit around in a park, on the grass and play with baby goats and piglets must be bereft of soul.

Kylie and I always talk about how we want to give some money to some animal charities but we never get around to doing it, so when this plan was put into action we figured we can put some money towards something that will help charity AND get to play with little piggies and goats and ducks and stuff. It was a win win situation!

I’m pretty sure I mentioned it after our last visit to Alma Park Zoo but it’s worth saying again. Animals really chill me out. There’s something great about interacting with animals and having that sort of connection with another living creature that just puts me in a really great frame of mind. So today was also a bit of a de-stress of me, much needed with what has been going on with my health lately. I will post another blog dealing with how my specialist appointment went last week when I get a chance.

So we arrived at the park today, said g’day to the Clumsy one and made our way to the animal enclosure. In there they had the following animals in baby form – Pigs, goats, sheep, a cow and chickens. They also had some grown up chickens and ducks that were floating around and a pony for kids to take rides on. You could buy a cup of feed as you went into the enclosure which we did and headed in.

Whilst in the enclosure I took some video with the GoPro Hero 2 which I have edited together with a rockin’ Toehider track from the Old, Old, Old EP from way back during 12in12.

Massive thanks and congratulations to Natalie for organising such an awesome event today. Charity + baby animals is an absolute winner. RSPCA Qld were also on hand today with information and a couple of awesome puppies that were available for adoption. I’m not sure if anyone took them up on that today or not though.

Anyway, enjoy the video and get your squee on!

I figure he’ll ask me questions about my bowel movements and how my insides are feeling and I was thinking about these things today and kept referring to said movements as “shits”. Shit is a word I use and have always used to describe what it is I do when I sit down on the toilet. Shit is generally considered to be a pretty tame swear word, but a swear word none the less.

When I picked up my sample jars for the stool samples I had to give, the woman at the pathology office said the word “poos”, which I really don’t like. When adults talk to me about “poo” I feel like they’re patronizing me or something. Almost like they’re talking to me and somehow I’m 7 years old.

I don’t use the word poo myself either, so that’s out of the question. Poop is the same, I wouldn’t use that word. Stools sounds too formal and like I think I’m trying to be a doctor, so I really don’t know what word to use at the doctors.

Is it OK to use the word shit to describe or talk about actual shit at the doctors? If I need to talk about how my shits have been is it alright for me to just talk about how my shits have been?

I know this must seem ridiculous right? This is how my brain is working right now. I actually got a bit stressed out about the whole thing.

It’s a bit crazy.

Tonight was pretty dark when we headed out and it’s Monday so everything down the road was shut. It’s always a bit creepy walking along down there on a Monday night. There’s hardly anyone around and the park is deserted so I get instantly suspicious and imaginative about the motives of anyone else I see walking around.

Tonight while we were at the half way mark having a drink and a chat some business looking dude come walking past us holding some sort of briefcase thing and headed off down the path towards our place. We started on our way home a short time behind him. After walking along for a little bit all of a sudden he come walking out of the darkness from the park, case still in hand and back onto the path and off again. What was he doing? There was a group of young looking people walking in the other direction along the path on the other side of the park, so I’m pretty sure he was selling them crack or something.

On the way home we come across a sign, on the back of which was a small Golden Orb was nesting in it’s web. GROSS. Oh god I fucking hate spiders. I’m now terrified that the spiders are going to be coming out and I’m going to be walking through their webs. That would be absolutely horrendous.

As we were approaching home waiting to cross the road to our place I was standing in what is essentially the bike lane of the street. A ute come burning around the corner, it’s tires squealing like crazy, I was actually a little worried it was going to lose it. Kylie yelled out to me “GET OFF THE ROAD!” like she was Frodo Baggins as it come flying past me. We started to cross the road right after it passed us and it came screeching to a halt just down the road a little bit and looked like it was doing a u-turn to come back our way. Kylie then blurted out “OH MY GOD IT’S LIKE DUEL!”. I love that girl so very much hah. Here’s the trailer for Duel.

Here’s a couple of photos from tonight. A texture and a gross spider!

Notes: Oh my god. Tonight’s walk wiped me out like crazy, I dunno what’s going on. It wasn’t the coolest night out and there was very little breeze coming off Moreton Bay, so maybe it was just hotter than usual and it took it out of me.

I also went down and back up the steep ramp part tonight, so I think that was a bit of extra strength sapping effort at the end.

I didn’t take any photos worth posting tonight and to be honest everything I’m taking seems to be the same old shit lately. I think I need to start trying some different stuff. I might try and start doing a series of texture photos. I had talked about doing that as part of Begrudgingly Trudging early on I think. That could be a cool plan.

Forget about that though because Kylie is fundraising again this year for The Cancer Council’s Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea! Last year we had a nice picnic in a park here in Redcliffe, but she’s doing things a little differently this year. I’ll leave that to her to explain though! If you want to donate you can do that right here.

Notes: Back at the walkies today! Last night my head was KILLING me when I got home, then the Homer Simpson in me started chasing a Cane Toad around the yard with my camera. I stopped when he hopped through the fence and was hit by a blasting headache 10 times worse. So had a night off.

Today we did the 2km route because we spent half the day walking around a couple of Westfields and were pretty knackered from so much consumerism.

Oh hey, so going back to the toad thing, here’s a short fun video I made with the only bit of footage I could get of the actual toad because it was so dark. I’ve smashed the exposure so hard in this that it’s desaturated and gone all grainy and rad. Looks like a late night film clip on Rage from the 90s.

Walk was nice tonight. Not very breezy but not overly warm. Kylie’s breaking in some cool new New Balance walking shoes so she took a bit of a break in the park to give them a bend and try and soften the heel parts. I powered to the end of the road and come back to pick her up. I snapped a photo of her lookin’ all cute and innocent on her break. Daw.

Still loving having the GoPro Hero 2 to carry around. I picked up the LCD back for it which has made framing for photos so much better. It’s a bit of a battery drain though.

Anyway here’s a couple of photos from Begrudgingly Trudging.

Notes: Did a shorter walk tonight. Have felt a bit terrible all day today. Spoke to the clinic where I have to go see the specialist to try and bring my appointment forward but can’t. I either have to take the appointment they’ve given me or get pushed back at least a month. Fuck that. I’ve managed to get in quickly because I’ve apparently been deemed as “urgent”, so I have to get it done. There’s a whole other blog in this, so look out for that later. My appointment is also right when I should be on a plane to Melbourne too, so I’ve had to cancel my trip which kinda bummed me out too.

Had a ticket for Jay and Silent Bob Get Old, the Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes show at The Tivoli tonight but sold my ticket earlier today. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being in a crowd of people tonight. Blerg.

We just headed down to the end of the shops and back tonight which is a pretty neat 2.0km spot on. It’s not epic, but it’s something at least.

I played with some more light trail photos tonight and shot a couple of cool textural shots of some cool dried sap on the outside of a tree.

Notes: Oh yeah. See that? No *! Awesome.

It was actually a little further than 3.0km, but like I suspected yesterday, the app I’m using stops at 2.99km when I have the goal set to 3.0km for some reason which makes no sense to me. Maybe I need to set my goal to 3.01km just so I can see 3.okm on the screen!

A lot of observations tonight. I had Kylie back with me again which was cool, but you’ll notice it added 6 minutes to my time. That’s because someone needs to buy some better shoes! You know who you are. So that was observation one. No matter how cute pink and silver sneakers may be, if they only cost $12 or something they’re probably not great for doing any great deal of walking in.

There were a lot of people out and about tonight and everyone was so friendly! It’s crazy. Usually I pass people but it’s like people who walk after work I think are usually people who can’t be arsed with getting up to do it in the morning. So they get home from work and make themselves go out and are usually surly and shut the world out and just trudge on until they’re done. Tonight though I think probably two in three people we passed said hello. It was cool.

Got out before the sun was down very far tonight so managed to get a couple of photos with at least some light in them.

As we were approaching the ramp to go down to the park by the beach there was a woman standing there with a poodle on a leash. The poodle was standing with it’s feet planted firmly into the grass and was staring us down as we approached. The old woman called out to us as we were approaching “Oh it’s OK…he just doesn’t like anyone walking behind him!”. Kylie and I both had a chuckle at it and headed down the path looking at this poodle who looked like he was so paranoid either of us were about to run up behind him and go for entry. Maybe something horrible had happened to him as a pup.

Anyway as we headed down the ramp we heard “See!” and turned to see the woman and her poodle, now relaxed and trotting along at her side as if nothing happened now that we weren’t on the path behind them. Crazy!

Something quite creepy happened on the way back. As we were coming along the road by the shops we saw a really creepy looking old man crossing the road leading a little boy to the park side of the road. He was, for some unknown reason, leading the small child into a dark area of the park where that big tree with green and blue lights is. My mind instantly screams PEDO, but as he was crossing our path, something happened where a cars headlights and the lamp light of the street came to cross in some eerie way that completely blacked out the shape of the man and the boy to a silhouette to us and the creepy old man complete with pointy evil face and fedora looked EXACTLY LIKE FREDDY KREUGER! It was crazy!

Creepy Freddy Kreuger pedo!

It was not long after that encounter that Kylie made the statement “Oh man I’m gonna be so proud of the blister I can feel forming on my foot!”. We went on to suggest names for it. My favourites were Blistersaurus Rex, Blistertron and Blist-Ra (a take on Mumm-ra). It does look like it could be quite epic. So new shoes are on the agenda for Kylie.

Oh yeah also, if you read my blog post Shrodinger’s Cancer -or- The QLD Public Health System Sucks, you’ll be happy to know I have received my specialist appointment offer. The only problem is that it’s 3 hours after I’m supposed to get on a plane to Melbourne. So I’ll be calling tomorrow to see if I can move it up a day or back six days. Hopefully sooner.

I took some more GoPro photos tonight, couple here, one more on Begrudgingly Trudging.