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Colonoscopy Journal

Sandlapper

New member
Brother Dave wrote this....I about fell out of the chair from laughing........it's all so true

Enjoy


Colonoscopy Journal:

I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy.

A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis .
Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner.

I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!'

I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America 's enemies..

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.

Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor.

Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons). Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose, watery bowel movement may result.'

This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but, have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep.

The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on Andy?' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked..

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep..
At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point.

Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand.

There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' had to be the least appropriate.

'You want me to turn it up?' said Andy, from somewhere behind me.

'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling 'Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine,' and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood.

Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that It was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.


On the subject of Colonoscopies...
Colonoscopies are no joke, but these comments during the exam were quite humorous..... A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies:
1. Take it easy Doc. YouÔÇÖre boldly going where no man has gone before.

2. 'Find Amelia Earhart yet?'

3. 'Can you hear me NOW?'

4. 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?'

5. 'You know, in Arkansas , we're now legally married.'

6. 'Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?'

7. 'You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out...'

8. 'Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!'

9. 'If your hand doesn't fit, you must quit!'

10. 'Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.'

11. 'You used to be an executive at Enron, didn't you?'

12. 'God, now I know why I am not gay.'

And the best one of all:
13. 'Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?'
 
re # 13 -

My doc told me sorry, no notes: just because he didn't find it doesn't mean it isn't there...
 
On the serious side.... While it's not the most enjoyable thing to have done, don't put it off.
My sister died from colon cancer on August 10th, 2010. She was only 54.
 
My wife had one at 48 when she just didn't feel right. They did find something, removed 8 inches of her colon and is cancer-free. Because she had the "scope" so early she essentially saved her own life. Not just for men. After this I finally got one myself after procrastinating for years.

Brother Dave was Spot-On. Especially about the splatter-down. Very funny.

mike wex
'07 Patrol
 
BTDT, twice. Pretty accurate description. The actual procedure is pretty much anti-climactic, esp. after the 'preparation'.
 
My last colonoscopy turned into surgery. I had two polyps removed. It wasn't a surprise. I told the doctor while being wheeled towards the procedure room that I definitely had an issue with bleeding. He didn't have any problem finding two polyps and removed them.

I see him again April 1st to schedule a follow-up colonoscopy. He told me he wanted me back in a year for that, and I will present myself as ordered. There has been no bleeding in a year, and I am hopeful he took care of the problem a year ago.

This is nothing to fool around with.

Harry
 
A Year of Days Worse Than Yours

A few years back, I too had a colonoscopy. It went fairly well the way the OP wrote about.

That year, as was my habit at the time, I purchased a desk calendar. It was a weekly calendar, titled "A Year of Days Worse Than Yours." Sure enough, on the page facing the actual calendar page was a brief article about some situation that was more than likely worse than anything the reader would be experiencing, one for each week of the year. Of course it had an article on colonoscopys, complete with a picture of a hand shealthed in a latex glove, preparing.

That year, I decided I needed to get a colonoscopy, contacted a doctor and set up an appointment. It was scheduled, and per my usual habit, I entered a reminder in my weekly desk calendar.

I did not have said weekly calendar with me when I made the appointment, but when I updated it, the week I chose was the same week as had the colonoscopy article!
 
Odd timing.. my gastroenterologist's office called yesterday to schedule a 5 year re-exam. I'm going to stall it until AFTER Easter.. in the hopes I can enjoy a bit of the chocolate I get before passing it.. along. Dave Barry's article was a wonderful inspiration to getting the first one done.. thanks for posting it again. The prep is the thing.. the actual exam is nothing. BTW - if you ask nicely you can get photos.. (I bet if I take a memory stick I can get a video now..)
 
Make certain you do all the prep correctly or they make you come back again the next day........they don't charge extra for it either...
 
Interesting reading. I'm still a few years away from this experience, but some of y'all might be amused to know that my job is to repair endoscopes in a regional service center of the largest manufacturer in the field, and most of what comes into the shop is colonscopes. We do make a scope for just about every orifice on the human body though.

The work is sometimes interesting if you're into mechanical stuff and engineering in general; at other times it's totally boring. The new models have some pretty cool technology in them. Despite all this, each scope also contains a small amount of hand-craftsmanship as the engineers in Tokyo have yet to come up with a better method than epoxy-reinforced, hand-tied thread for securing the bending-section cover. One interesting aspect of the work is that it's all proprietary: the company has to invent most of the tools we use, and there is no school for this except for the company training. Much of the work is on a very small scale too- for instance, I regularly work with headless screws 1.2mm dia. x 1.4mm length, and we have some that are smaller than that. I wear a headband-type magnifier much of the day and I do a lot of work under a stereo-microscope too.

One thing that is just a little scary is the damage that we see on some scopes. The top-of-the-line colonscope sells for something north of $40K, and they often come in fairly well-smacked-around. Makes you wonder, and it's no wonder that healthcare is so expensive when you consider that it only takes a few seconds of carelessness to damage a scope to the point that it needs a $9000 refurbishment.

And yes, the customers DO clean the scopes before they send them to us (I know you wondered!).
 
Brother Dave wrote this....I about fell out of the chair from laughing........it's all so true

Enjoy

And the best one of all:
13. 'Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?'

I laughed so hard I shed tears.
 
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