Colon prep didn't work

[ghostjmf]

Long as I started this....


2nd time was "the charm", but almost wasn't. At least the pineapple flavoring didn't really taste like pineapple, so will not spoil my enjoyment of pineapple forevermore. But it looked like 2nd time was to be a replay of unsuccessful 1st time, only without the intense stomach pains. That's pretty much all I got out of 1st go-round, other than a speeded up but normal few bowel movements. If you don't get drug-induced diarrhea, with the final runs "running clear", as they say, it didn't work to the gastroenterologists' specs, & they probably won't complete the procedure after the initial look-see.


At 4 hours in, after I had drunk 1/2 the stuff, nothing had happened. I didn't have the stomach pains I'd had during the Miralax debacle, pains so strong I thought that if I ever need chemo, I won't be able to go through it because I'm such a wuss (except they give you some pain-relief drugs for chemo, but none for these preps). Since we're talking the same stuff (polyethylene glycol), & supposedly the same dose, I don't know what the diff is here, sincerely. Other than the Golytely has electrolytes built in, & Miralax doesn't, which is why they want you to take it with Gatorade, which I didn't, as generally Gatorade alone will make me puke. But the Miralax prep has the severe "you're drinking oil" sensation, which I also get with Gatorade, the Golytely does not. Go figure.


I tried to make myself drink the last 1/2. Truly I did. Couldn't make myself do it. The doc's instructions had said to drink 8 oz every 20 minutes, the instructions that "came with" said every 15. Obviously, since it took me 4 hours to get 1/2 down, I wasn't downing it fast enough by anybody's instructions. I was holding my nose from the 1st, per various instructions. It helped, but not enough.



I fell asleep. And woke up about 3 hours later, with another failed test looming.


I made myself drink the rest of the prep in little over an hour.


What can I say. It worked. I guess speed of drinking that stuff really does matter. For anyone prepping in future.

At some point I tried a lemonade "chaser", which instead of helping immediately brought back to mind the supposedly-lemon-flavored real Golytely I'd had 10 years ago. Mistake. Diet gingerale chasers did help some.


Miralax was the prep where you're supposed to drink half the night before, the rest in the am. When they gave me the generic Golytely, they told me it was also a split prep. I had already read the instructions, told them "no it isn't", then hightailed it out of there before they could correct this, as I knew I wasn't going to be able to get the 2nd 1/2 down in a split prep.


So I wound up doing a split prep on the Golytely anyway. And it worked.


Of course, I was visiting any available bathrooms I could on my way to the hospital, which isn't easy when you're riding a subway to get there, &, no, the MBTA in Boston doesn't have bathrooms. Which is why I initially thought a split prep was a very bad idea. My recommendation is to do the whole thing at once, as fast as you can. (Luckily, Dunkin Donuts, of which there is one at both ends of my bus-&-subway route, does have bathrooms. Thank you, Dunkin.)


And have scheduled an early am procedure, which I did have.


Except they made me wait an extra hour. They were backed up, it seems. Pun intended. So I'm all gowned up & waiting in the little waiting room with multiple other people (more women than men but this is not a gender-segregated unit), keeping my fingers crossed my body, which is so good at it, apparently, wasn't compiling more excrement even as I waited there.


Men awaiting this procedure are not as mindful as women of keeping their hospital gowns all closed up; take that as a warning, both genders.


Doctor told me they found nothing bad. "A normal colon". Haven't got the official results yet, & its been a couple weeks at least, so I'm so glad they "broke the code" & told me. Techs are not allowed to do that, but doctors are.

[Bob Juch]

I'm glad everything came out alright.

[MarleysGh0st]

Congratulations on a successful prep and a (preliminary) good report!

[jaybee]

If everything's normal, maybe you'll be on the ten-year plan and will not have to do this again for a decade.

[ghostjmf]

Just for the record, anyone who's going to have this should tell them you have sleep apnea. Even if you don't. I do, & have papers from their hospital to prove it, but they didn't seem to be checking those, instead they asked on their form. If you have apnea, you have the procedure done in the real hospital. Otherwise they can farm you out to a facility with less resources. I would prefer to have my procedures done in the real hospital, thanks.


They had me attached to an automatic blood pressure cuff for the the whole procedure, which was a drag because it was only set up for the left arm, & I'm left-handed, so don't want that stuff done on my left arm in the event something awful happens to cut off my circulation & I lose the arm (did I mention I'm paranoid?). They said they'd been thinking about setting up a different set-up for lefties, but hadn't yet. And they took my blood sugar periodically, for which I was thankful. It had gone way down (seriously; 46 when I was on a bus from NYC; I know you're supposed to be babbling or unconscious at that level, but I wasn't) during my prep for the 1st, failed procedure, & I had to drink orange juice, not my favorite beverage but one recommended to diabetics in crisis, to bring it back up. It didn't go so low during the prep for the 2nd procedure but I was worried so was glad they were checking.


Also, anyone who hasn't had one of these yet; its not painful. The prep is the most painful part, believe me. They give you enough anaesthetic that you feel very little. And I told them that in my previous procedure, 10 years before, I had been complaining that it hurt more than it should but no-one appeared to be paying attention to me, & that if you go by my experience at the dentist with novocaine, I need either a longer wait for it to take effect or extra novocaine, maybe both. They paid attention to that, apparently, & gave me sufficient anaesthesia this time around. The team was all really courteous & professional. The Dr. explained they were using C02 as the gas they use to inflate your intestines, because it gets absorbed by the body better than the air they used to use for this. I appreciated being told that too (my failed sigmoidoscopy [that's just the lower intestine] 10 years ago, done without anaesthesia, had left me with severe gas pains for hours). They warned me when they were coming up to a sharp curve. Kind of like a polite driver.

[Beebs52]

Ghost-I hope I'm not reading what you posted correctly. You said they gave you enough anaesthesia so you felt very little? Because, I was totally knocked out and didn't "feel" anything. Just woke up and it was done. Didn't your insurance pay for that? I just, I mean, yowsers. Please tell me I misunderstood. I have a friend who woke up midstream once but they quickly remedied the situation. Oh jeez.

[Bob Juch]

Ghost-I hope I'm not reading what you posted correctly. You said they gave you enough anaesthesia so you felt very little? Because, I was totally knocked out and didn't "feel" anything. Just woke up and it was done. Didn't your insurance pay for that? I just, I mean, yowsers. Please tell me I misunderstood. I have a friend who woke up midstream once but they quickly remedied the situation. Oh jeez.

I was sedated but awake for all three of mine.

[Jeemie]

When I did mine, I did something called MOVIPrep (PEG-3350, sodium sulfate, sodium chloride, potassium chloride, sodium ascorbate and ascorbic acid for oral solution)

That stuff blasted the sh!t right out of me!

[Jeemie]

Ghost-I hope I'm not reading what you posted correctly. You said they gave you enough anaesthesia so you felt very little? Because, I was totally knocked out and didn't "feel" anything. Just woke up and it was done. Didn't your insurance pay for that? I just, I mean, yowsers. Please tell me I misunderstood. I have a friend who woke up midstream once but they quickly remedied the situation. Oh jeez.

I was sedated but awake for all three of mine.

I did the "Twilight" method- the stuff knocks you out as long as they are giving it to you...wears off almost as soon as they stop giving it to you.

I think they stopped it too soon. I woke up enough to realize the probe was definitely still inside me.

Not cool at all!

[Beebs52]

You guys! You're killing me here! I just don't even want to think about being half awake or whatever during that. I am so sorry.

Holy shit. Really. Holy shit. And I mean that in the most literal way, sorta. Maybe not.

[Jeemie]

Try the MOVIPrep next time, Ghost.

Tastes like chalky lemonade, but easy enough to drink down.

[ghostjmf]

Beebs:

For all the colonoscopies (3, the one in the middle the failed one) I've had they give sedation (via an IV in your arm) not general anaesthesia (via mask on your face). They make you go through the whole routine of having an escort to come on the floor & take you home or they won't do the procedure, "because you're too anaesthetized even to call a taxi". Which is silly, & not true, but it's their rules. Fortunately for the escort, they have to be checkable by phone earlier but don't have to show up 'til its over. (And taxi services won't let the drivers come up to the hospital floor; I checked. Maybe in this day of Uber & whatall you can get an escort that way, but fortunately I have a friend who lives nears this hospital, is retired & was not out of town who agreed to this this time around.)


Diff hospitals do it different ways, I guess. Its also true that the sedation they give at Mass General puts some people into enough of a "twilight sleep" that they don't remember anything anyway. But I am not one of those people. The drug they used, they told me, was demerol. Which worked just fine. This would be my drug-of-choice, for reasons I won't go into here, if I were into drugs. Much more so than the dilaudid, an opiate, they had me on for pain when they cut me open to remove cancerous & other body parts a couple years ago. My reaction to the dilaudid was "I'll trust that I would hurt even more if I wasn't taking this, but it otherwise doesn't do anything for me".



The sigmoidoscopy, which was my 1st exam 10 years ago, which failed because I wasn't "cleaned out enough", on the other hand; no anaesthetic to speak of; they may have used a novocaine equiv locally, who knows. They pumped me so full of air that I stayed in their waiting area about 4 hours doubled over in pain from gas pains, in this case air pains, while they walked around me. I figured if I really needed medical attention after that procedure, I was already in the hospital so I stayed there. However, they didn't require me to have an escort for that because I hadn't been anaesthetized. Its the hospital's lawyers indemnifying them from claims, not any evaluation of what state you're really in.


Jeemie: When I learned that the Golytely (that eventually worked) was the same ethylene glycol that was in the Miralax prep that had just failed, I learned that they tell you to buy over-the-counter Miralax or prescribe Golytely in this practise & that was that. Pleading for a different prep wouldn't help, they wouldn't prescribe one. Maybe in 10 years they'll have more choices.

[jaybee]

I was totally out for mine - don't remember a thing (And I'm quite happy about that).

Interesting your comment abut sleep apnea. When I came to after the procedure, the anesthesiologist tracked me down and asked me if I'd ever been tested for apnea. When I told her that I had not, she said, "get tested - now". Turns out that I crashed a few times on them while under. And yes, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea soon after.