Given most of you guys are 2-3x my age (I'm 26) I figured I'd write this because maybe it would help one of you guys - today I got the thrill of recovering from a cold, while getting a colonoscopy. No blood in the poop, but I'd been feeling a bit unwell in the lower left part of my abdomen for a while. Long story short, they found several pre-cancerous polyps and identified an infection that is probably making me sick.
I was absolutely terrified to go for it (for obvious reasons), but glad I did. If you ever get told to get one, it really is a breeze - the WORST thing you can do is researching it on the internet. After research, i was terrified of the prep (having poop falling out of me every 5seconds on the floor until I get to the bathroom) and the procedure (kept having nightmares of a gigantic snake chasing me through a hospital :laugh: )
Prep (day before) - wake up at 11am, add water to colyte (colon prep solution) and refrigerate it. Eat popsicles, water, ginger ale and Ensure until 5pm. Then at 6 you drink 8oz of colyte every 10minutes. Then after an hour get ready to make a lot of liquid poop for the next 4-5hours.
Internet research shows me now that people are pansies. 1/2 the people complain about colyte saying it tastes like piss, they refused to drink it and skipped their procedure, they only drank half, etc... etc... It tastes like salt water, but just gulp it down in 2-3gulps. Don't be a pansy and sit there spending 5minutes smelling it and mixing tea or coffee or whatever with it. Just drink it.
The pooping part is also over-rated - poop will not come flying out of you for no reason. You'll feel like you have to go, and then you go and poop out a bunch of liquid. Honestly, when I got food poisoning I was sometimes worried I wouldn't be able to make it to the bathroom ontime. Here, no problems - yes, you'll feel like you have to go poop, but it's not 'OMG; it's comign out this very second!!!! RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN!!!!'
Procedure - You get an IV, you're wheeled in, the doctor puts something on his thumb and pokes you in the bum and you're like :blank: . Then they sedate you, you wake up, and you never get to see what happens.
Surprisingly they have a fair number of people who make it to the procedure but as soon as they get poked in the bum with the doctor's fingers, before the sedation, they actually get up and refuse to go any further and leave :laugh:
Seriously, as long as you're not a dumbass who tries to go to work and do the colon prep there, the last 2 days were nothing more than a minor inconvenience at worst - I spent the last few weeks psyching myself out over it for nothing.
My dad's 70 and should have it done, but he's refused the last 5yrs because he's terrified of getting the snake shoved into his bum, as most people probably are, but hopefully after reading this you see it rates a -1000/10 on the "traumatic life experiences' sheet and there's nothing to it at all - hell, I was apparently going to have colon cancer before I was 30, now I'm not :thumbsup:
I was absolutely terrified to go for it (for obvious reasons), but glad I did. If you ever get told to get one, it really is a breeze - the WORST thing you can do is researching it on the internet. After research, i was terrified of the prep (having poop falling out of me every 5seconds on the floor until I get to the bathroom) and the procedure (kept having nightmares of a gigantic snake chasing me through a hospital :laugh: )
Prep (day before) - wake up at 11am, add water to colyte (colon prep solution) and refrigerate it. Eat popsicles, water, ginger ale and Ensure until 5pm. Then at 6 you drink 8oz of colyte every 10minutes. Then after an hour get ready to make a lot of liquid poop for the next 4-5hours.
Internet research shows me now that people are pansies. 1/2 the people complain about colyte saying it tastes like piss, they refused to drink it and skipped their procedure, they only drank half, etc... etc... It tastes like salt water, but just gulp it down in 2-3gulps. Don't be a pansy and sit there spending 5minutes smelling it and mixing tea or coffee or whatever with it. Just drink it.
The pooping part is also over-rated - poop will not come flying out of you for no reason. You'll feel like you have to go, and then you go and poop out a bunch of liquid. Honestly, when I got food poisoning I was sometimes worried I wouldn't be able to make it to the bathroom ontime. Here, no problems - yes, you'll feel like you have to go poop, but it's not 'OMG; it's comign out this very second!!!! RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN!!!!'
Procedure - You get an IV, you're wheeled in, the doctor puts something on his thumb and pokes you in the bum and you're like :blank: . Then they sedate you, you wake up, and you never get to see what happens.
Surprisingly they have a fair number of people who make it to the procedure but as soon as they get poked in the bum with the doctor's fingers, before the sedation, they actually get up and refuse to go any further and leave :laugh:
Seriously, as long as you're not a dumbass who tries to go to work and do the colon prep there, the last 2 days were nothing more than a minor inconvenience at worst - I spent the last few weeks psyching myself out over it for nothing.
My dad's 70 and should have it done, but he's refused the last 5yrs because he's terrified of getting the snake shoved into his bum, as most people probably are, but hopefully after reading this you see it rates a -1000/10 on the "traumatic life experiences' sheet and there's nothing to it at all - hell, I was apparently going to have colon cancer before I was 30, now I'm not :thumbsup: