Winky One Eye
After the Fact - these were the worst wounds, honestly.
My last posting was all about my mouth…so I guess it’s only fitting to follow the path down.
Sorry, no rabbit hole here.
I don’t need to get into the details that lead to this, but on Tuesday I went in for a colonoscopy. The fun actually started on Monday, with the preparation for the procedure. This included fasting throughout Monday and into Tuesday, living off of “clear” liquids – water, colas, fruit juices, gatorade, bouillon. On top of that, I was required to cleanse the system.
The fasting wasn’t much of a problem, and I didn’t really start to think about food until later at night – and then I started to think of all the things I’d eat after the procedure. Bouillon helped – vegetable, just to give me a salty kick and get away from all of the sweet drinks. Thinking of pizza the next day helped even more (I ultimately skipped on the pizza, though).
The cleansing was probably the worst of it all, and it wasn’t really too bad. The process started with 4 laxatives at 4pm – these things are TINY. They make tic tacs look big. I could have easily lost them between my teeth. Tiny.
An hour later, the fun really began. I had to mix a large bottle of Miralax into 64 ounces of Gatorade – and then drink it within an hour. That’s a lot of fluid in an hour. Miralax is interesting – it’s polyethylene glycol, very closely related to ethylene glycol (i.e. antifreeze), but molecularly heavy enough that your body doesn’t absorb it. Supposedly. It comes as a granular powder, almost like fine plastic beads (probably not far off), and dissolves rather quickly. Of course, 64 ounces of fluid is a lot to dissolve into it – did I mention that’s a lot of fluid?
It didn’t affect the taste of Gatorade – I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not – but about a quarter of the way into the bottle I could definitely feel my mouth feeling slightly slick. I could imagine saliva beading up on my tongue. Not that I had much of a chance to let it – I was busy drinking. And drinking. Oh, and drinking some more. I figured the slick feeling in my mouth meant that my digestive track was every bit as slick, and nothing was going to be sticking.
I was right.
This stuff works rather quick. I think I’ll skip on most of the details, though. The worst of it was the occasional “gassy” feeling – that got painful, but always in short bursts, and it passed quickly. Um. Literally.
The next day I wasn’t allowed any fluids after 9am, so I made sure to get up a bit before 9 and have a small drink. I guess that’s one way to get me out of bed.
We had to be at the clinic by 1pm, fill out a bit of paperwork, and then I was taken to the back. Here they have a bunch of semi-private areas – cubes inset into the walls, separated from the main room through a curtain. Pretty typical I’m sure, but I don’t generally hang out in hospitals or clinics (or watch them on TV). Here I had to change into the easy access gown with a weird wrap around and confounding ties. This is why I stick to t-shirts – they’re easy. Luckily the nurses were able to straighten out my mess, and then they had me get into the bed.
While one asked me all of the medical questions (am I allergic to this, problems with that, how often, when was the last time), another was prepping me with the blood pressure wrap, EEG pads, and then got to digging around for a vein. She decided at first that my arm wasn’t pumped up enough (I blame a day of fasting and flushing) and decided to go after a vein in the back of my hand. This, hands down, was the worst part of the entire ordeal. I’ve given blood, and have had blood tests, but this wasn’t that. At all. After a couple of minutes of working it around (and trying to distract me with personal questions), we all collectively decided we should try the arm again. This was much more successful – still painful, but cake compared to the hand.
I think they should get sharper needles.
They have Marlyse come back and hang out while waiting for the doctor to be ready, we chat a bit, and then wheel me back to the procedure room. I think they find the smallest nurse they have to push this big bed around. I joke that I should get out and help, she laughs and says she doesn’t hit too much usually – she actually did rather well. Still, it seemed like a lot of weight with me in it, and I still feel like I should have been able to help somehow.
The procedure room has new nurses and they connect up my wires to the bing machines – I’m happy to see that my blood pressure is decent (120s by 70s) and my heart rate hovering around 70. All throughout the process I never felt nervous or worried – even when they explained that the colon can tear and if that happened it became a surgical procedure (I’d kind of hope so); this was the first time I’ve been put under, too, but I wasn’t thinking about it much. Seeing the numbers up on the screen I was reassured that I was feeling how I thought.
They had me reposition a bit (my feet were hanging off the end), and then roll over onto my side. After a bit of lifting so they could ensure “access” with my gown, the doctor comes in and asks how I’m doing. We chat for a minute, and then the anesthesiologist (thanks google for the spelling) says this will only take a minute. She asks if I’m feeling it yet and I say “oh yeah, it’s starting to hit” though I really think it came out as “oh….” thump.
That was it. Out solid.
Somehow there was a sense of time passing, though I can’t really recall if I dreamed. It was definitely a very deep sleep, but smoooooth – good stuff. When I finally start coming to, I had the sense that Marlyse was there with me and I said something about the cats (the cats sleep with us at night, and I generally find at least one on my pillow). I know whatever I said was extremely clear in my head, but it took several attempts before Marlyse had a sense of what I was talking about.
They gave me some time to orientate myself, gave me some juice (which I gagged on the first sip – drink it, don’t breathe it), and then I was allowed to change. It’s good that they don’t let you drive home on your own – the stuff does work out of your system quickly (metabolize), but I was still slightly tipsy on my feet, very slightly spacey. It was all good. Marlyse was there and took good care of me. She even swung me by Goodcents to finally start filling up my belly. I indulged, added chips AND a cookie into the order. I could have easily gone to DQ instead and loaded up on a Blizzard, but I was still hoping to benefit from the fasting of the previous day and keep working on the diet.
Still 2 pounds down, so I guess that was a success.
I took it easy the rest of the night, had another meal (made Marlyse drive then again, too), then slept in until 11 this morning. But I felt great, no soreness or anything else. Even went for a bike ride today.
For those of you concerned about an upcoming colonoscopy, or dreading having one sometime in the future, don’t worry about. It’s very smooth – the procedure itself is completely a non-event. I guess you could dread someone doing something “down there” but I sure didn’t have any sensation of that after the fact. The prep was really the only issue, and even that was minor at worst.
Now…do I post the pics? They’re very intimate. 
