Testing
I wasn't going to write about this, but it's important, so I'm going to go ahead.Last week, I had all kinds of tests on my stomach. My doctor thought I had IBS, but IBS is an exclusionary diagnosis--that's what you wind up diagnosing after other things (Crohn's, IBD, and some other very bad things) have been excluded. Well, those bad things have been excluded now, so while I have some pretty frustrating functional issues with my stomach, they're not dangerous.
The test I had on Friday was a colonoscopy. Yes, that means a fiber optic camera up your ass, thanks very much. I didn't mind the procedure so much, but they gave me a polo shirt as an acknowledgement afterwards, and believe me, the logo was appalling.
If you're 50 or over, you've probably had a colonoscopy. I'm 45, but because of my stomach problems, I got a five-year early learner permit. If you're over 50 and haven't had a colonoscopy, though, you're taking a risk, particularly that you might have colon cancer and not even know it. From the Wiki:
Due to the high mortality associated with colon cancer and the high effectivity and low risks associated with colonoscopy, it is now also becoming a routine screening test for people 50 years of age or older. Subsequent rescreenings are then scheduled based on the initial results found, with a five- or ten-year recall being common for colonoscopies that produce normal results.
"High mortality associated with colon cancer." People die each year because they didn't want to have a colonoscopy, which would have alerted them to colon cancer before it was too late. Here's an e-mail I received on Saturday from a DQ reader (who is a frequent contributor as well, and a tremendously nice guy):
Thanks for putting it out there for people to know you were going in for a colonoscopy. People need to realize there is nothing shameful about having it done. My dad passed away about four years ago from colon cancer that ended up metastasizing in his liver. Doctors told him if he'd come in for a colonoscopy six months earlier they'd have caught it in time for it not to be a problem.
So if you're putting off having a colonoscopy because of the "ick" factor, that's nothing compared to the possible "death" factor. And it's incredibly sad to leave the people you love behind because the idea of a medical procedure made you feel too uncomfortable to proceed.
Now, to help you with the unknown, I'm going to briefly describe how this works, because it's not nearly as bad as you might think. In fact, it's not bad at all, really. And I have some advice to make the process much less uncomfortable.
First off, let me briefly describe what you do in preparation. To have a colonoscopy, you must first empty the colon. That means that the day before the procedure, all you'll be eating will be a very light breakfast (one piece of dry toast, for example). For the rest of the day, you'll be drinking fluids (certain colors are excluded--red and orange, I believe) only. Plus you can have clear chicken broth and things like that.
That sounds awful, but it's really not. I just drank tea with sugar, mostly, and I drank quite a bit of water, also, because being hydrated makes the later prep much easier. I took the day off from work, wrote the blog, answered e-mail, and played lots of games. The day passed fairly quickly, at least until 3 p.m., when the real prep started.
At 3 p.m., I had to take four tablets of a laxative. That was easy.
At 5 p.m., I had to mix 255ml of a powered laxative into a half gallon of what turned out to be lemon-flavored Powerade Option (which is clear). The prep instructions had all kinds of advice, like chill the solution after mixing, use a straw, etc., but I wouldn't recommend any of that. I can drink liquids, much, much more quickly at room temperature, so I just mixed it up and left it out.
You drink an 8 oz. glass every 10-15 minutes, which means if you drink on the 15 minute schedule, you're doing it for two freaking hours.
Here's the first moment when I was surprised, though. I thought the solution would taste just awful--but it didn't. I don't know if was the Powerade or what, but it just tasted like really, really sweet lemonade, and it wasn't that thick.
Well, hell, that's easy. I drank 8 oz. glasses and went on the 10 minute schedule when I realized it didn't taste bad. So I was done in an hour and ten minutes.
Well, done with the drinking, anyway.
What this solution (and the half gallon of fluid) will do is clean you out, and I do mean clean. About an hour and twenty minutes after I started, I went upstairs to the bathroom, and--there's no polite way to put this--had quite the evacuation of watery stool.
I did that three times over the course of about ninety minutes. The prep sheet advised me to get flushable baby wipes, which I did, and probably because of that, my ass never got sore (sorry for the graphic detail, but that happens quite often during the prep, and I think the wipes are what helped me avoid it). Plus, and this also helped, I didn't eat that much on Wednesday--one of my meals was a smoothie, and I ate pretty lightly otherwise. Yes, I was probably hungrier on Thursday than I would have been otherwise, but it was worth it to me to make the "evacuation" go more easily.
So by about 8 p.m., I was essentially done with prep, and I felt fine. I drank enough fluids during the day so that I wasn't dehydrated, because if you were, I think you'd feel pretty wobbly when you were done.
After midnight, I couldn't drink anything. I was asleep by then, though.
The next morning, I went with Gloria when she took Eli to school. We were at the clinic's offices by 9 a.m. (the procedure was scheduled for 10 a.m.). I filled out some paperwork, then was called back about 9:40. They put me on a bed, gave me a saline I.V., and attached some monitoring doo-dads. About fifteen minutes later, they switched the I.V. over to some kind of sedative.
I don't remember much after that. I do remember hearing people while they were doing the procedure, and I think I said something to them (100% guaranteed to be stupid), but I couldn't feel a thing. And I don't remember anything else until I woke up in the recovery area. So there was absolutely zero pain during the procedure.
Let me say that again: zero pain.
After the procedure, in the sensistive "assal" area (I made that up, but you know what I mean), there was also zero pain. You can't drive for twenty-four hours (unless you want to wind up on CNN), so Gloria drove me home.
I was home by 11:30 a.m. The procedure doesn't take long. I was still drowsy, so I took a very pleasant two-hour nap, the first one of that length I've taken in 5.4 years.
That was pretty much it--I'd been totally dreading the whole thing, and it was so much less awful than I expected that I was shocked. It wasn't really embarrassing, it wasn't really disgusting, and it really wasn't anything to avoid.
So please, if your doctor has recommended that you have a colonoscopy and you've avoided it, or you're over 50 and have never had one, reread this until you're convinced it's not such a big deal, then call and make an appointment.
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