On mortality, music and perfection anxiety - Amir Kiani

About 2 years ago, after months of dealing with chronic stomach ache and digestive problems, I finally managed to get my gastroenterologist (GI) specialist at UCSF to prescribe me an endoscopy and colonoscopy. Before then, my GI specialist was (understandably) suggesting that I should just take more fiber in my diet and should instead work on reducing my stress levels, which were likely the cause of my psychosomatic symptoms. Given my young age and lack of severe symptoms, there was no reason to be worried, but having tried almost everything on my end, I just felt like something was fundamentally off with my insides.1

I woke up from my (first) colonoscopy on August, 8, 2022 feeling weirdly calm. The country was still recovering from the COVID pandemic and the hospitals still didn’t allow anyone other than the patients inside. The first face I recognized while laying in the hospital bed was my GI surgeon. In a soft and calm tone she said: “Hi Amir. I am really glad you came in for this. We found a lot of polyps in your stomach and colon. We removed most of them but you have to come again in six months for a second surgery. You should do regular screening going forward.”

I felt a mild combination of shock and relief. I was however a bit too high on drugs at that moment for my usual problem solving mode to kick in. My loving wife, who had been waiting nervously for me to get discharged at the hospital parking lot, then picked me up and we rode back home. We now had to wait for a pathologist to analyze the extracted tissue from my body and tell us if it was cancer or not.

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