What I say: I have a hospital appointment

What other people hear: She’ll be there for a couple of hours

What actually happens: Hospital on Friday for covid test; spend Saturday panicking; no food from Sunday 9am until Monday 4pm; Sunday evening drink two litres of bowel prep; at hospital for 9am Monday; actual endoscopy(ies) at 10.30am with sedation; another 30-60 mins in recovery, discharged around 12pm; home at 12.30pm. But hang on, it’s a capsule endoscopy too, so no drinks allowed until 2pm; no food until 4pm (a total of 31 hours without food) then waiting for the capsule to *evacuate*; panicking when it doesn’t in case you need an x-ray to check if it’s still there, or the test might need to be retaken if there wasn’t enough footage and you have to go through the whole thing again, or need surgery to get it out; then finally relief when it does come out right before bedtime and the recorder thankfully hasn’t run out of battery; worrying still though in case the bowel prep wasn’t good enough for clear pictures and the test needs to be redone, or if they find cancer again; then work in the morning (but only from home as you had sedation and can’t drive again yet), where you need to be a productive human being and ignore it all, while awaiting the capsule endoscopy results.

Welcome to cancer. That was my “weekend” – how was yours?

On the plus side, the gastroscopy found nothing abnormal. Hoping for good results from the capsule endoscopy, too. That would make up for the sore throat and jaw and the embarrassment of chatting absolute nonsense to the nurses while sedated. And getting bile in my hair.