The first piece of fiction I read after finishing Reading Like a Writer was a short story by Tessa Hadley in a New Yorker from last summer ¹.

I generally don’t like short stories. Most seem gimicky, or thin, or written according to some stylebook I’m immediately suspicious of. Short fiction often leaves me hungry to know more, feel more, understand more. I get to the end, note the sharp shock of emotion or understanding, appreciate how we got there at the end of they leave me many more unanswerd questions with a there’s not enough there

I had a colonoscopy last Friday, and it took me quite a while to understand the report they sent home. Particularly annoying was the section that describes how to determine when you’ll have to go through the entire ordeal again: “Recommend repeat colonoscopy in three years if three or more polyps are adenomatous.” What am I supposed to do with that? Look it up, I guess.

So here’s what I found out. There are three types of polyps that can develop in the colon. One, a type of benign tumor called an adenoma, is considered pre-cancerous. So if you have enough of them you have to come back sooner in order to lower your risk of colon cancer.  OK, well why didn’t you say so in the first place?

There’s one sentence in the results section that I’m still not able to parse, even after looking up every word. (A problem common to beginning readers and language learners, now that I think of it.)

Patent functional end-to-end colo-colonic anastomosis, characterized by healthy appearing mucosa.

I think that just means my gut can still move things along the way it’s supposed. One of the not-insignificant burdens of aging, to even have to consider such things. But healthy is good. And gratitude’s the attitude.