Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The joys of colonoscopy prep

It's changed somewhat in the eight years between my previous one and this evening's reaming out.

Eight years ago I had to choke down two little bottles of the single most nauseatingly vile stuff I have ever encountered. This time I've had to mix an entire bottle of a powdered laxative into 96 ounces of Gatorade (anything but red), which is far more

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palatable than the other stuff. Of course, I now associate Gatorade with colonoscopy prep, but fortunately it's not a drink I was a fan of before, so developing a distasteful association is no

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big deal. So here I am, quaffing my way through two 32-ounce jugs of the stuff, one eight-ounce glassful every 15 minutes, with the happy prospect of getting up at 5:00 a.m. tomorrow morning in

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order to gulp my way, at the same 15-minute intervals, through the last jugful. Then I get to wait till almost noon for the deed itself to be done. Which is probably the least unpleasant part of the whole process, since they knock you out for it and you don't remember a thing. I recall from last time, I was chatting with the nurse as she got me positioned, then I was asking her "So when does it start?" and she laughed and

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said, "It's already done." So if you can get through the prep, the procedure itself is a breeze.

Of course, I am not allowed to have any solid food today, and for several days preceding Prep Day it's recommended one avoid anything but low-residue foods. While the instruction sheet doesn't say this, it's a damned good idea NOT to try to load up with sustenance the day before no-food day because you WILL have to clear all that out, and the more

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that's in your system, the more that has to be flushed from your piping. I've been on a low-residue diet for weeks now because of my gastric problems and have had to do liquid fast days now and then, so it wasn't all that difficult to simply dial my

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intake back a bit farther. Yesterday, in fact, was a ratcheting-down day of egg whites in broth, yogurt, and jello, all in small quantities, so today's colonic cleansing isn't too dreadful. Too bad I didn't

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know these things for my first colonoscopy! That prep was miserable for more than just the disgusting

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vile nasty stuff I had to drink -- and no, mixing it into apple juice, as one well-meaning friend suggested, didn't help one bit! So all in all, this isn't so bad.

At least it's better than

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a sharp stick in the eye.

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