It’s hard to believe that’s it been five years since this happened. I am supposed to have a colonoscopy every five years (since I’m over fifty). So, I called my gastro doctor’s office (Dr. McCombs). I ended up having to cancel my original date of July and with various things going on, my scheduled date got pushed back to the last Friday in February.
I began my preparation a week from this date. You have to stop eating anything with seeds in or on it (like a sesame seed bun). You are also are not supposed to eat corn or beans. That isn’t too bad of a challenge. The day before though, you have to have pretty much a liquid diet. The only remotely solid things you can have are popsicles and Jell-O. You cannot have anything red or purple which knocks out my two favorite flavors of cherry and grape. I ended up with banana popsicles and orange Jell-O. I did interestingly discover that a banana Popsicle only has forty calories in it. My lunch and supper consisted of the drained off broth from chicken noodle soup.
I was to being taking my prep (called “SuPrep”) at 6pm. This consisted of a 6 ounce bottle of liquid you mixed with enough water to produce sixteen ounces. You were supposed to consume this over an hour’s time and then follow it up with two sixteen ounce glasses of water. This varied from my previous experience where I drank a lot more “prep” over several hours. The taste still wasn’t pleasing; it reminded me of cherry cough syrup. Anyway, I finished the prep solution and as Bill Engvall says in his comedy bit about this – “It works…”. I spent the next three hours going back and forth to the bathroom every few minutes. I did manage to catch most of the Kentucky-Mississippi State women’s basketball game. Kentucky upset the number three Bulldogs in overtime. I was finally able to go to bed about 10pm.
I had been able to get my appointment for my colonoscopy for 7am. Unfortunately, this meant I had to get up at 4:00am to do the whole SuPrep process again. It was as effective as the night before. It was so effective that I wasn’t sure I could make it to my appointment at my Gastro center at Baptist Health. I did manage to make it with no “incidents”. I checked in and went back with Donna when they called my name. I had to put on a gown, get an IV inserted, and answer a whole laundry list of questions. The nurse then told me how the process would work. It turned out that they use a different anesthesia now. You wake up quickly and with none of loopiness that I had last time. Also, they now inflate your colon with carbon dioxide instead of air which allows your colon to absorb the gas. In other words, you don’t have to work to “expel the gas” like I had to last time. I was disappointed for Donna since now most if not all the entertainment value of my colonoscopy was gone. :-)
After a slight wait, they came to fetch me for my procedure. They left me in a hallway next to the room where they’d do the procedure for a few minutes and then brought me in. Dr. McCombs came in and talked to me a little bit and then the staff had me roll up on my left side. I remember glancing at the clock and seeing it was 8:46 and then I was gone. When I woke up in a recovery room, I could make out a clock in the hallway which looked like it said 1:45. I was aghast, I thought something must have been horribly amiss to have been back there for five hours. When I looked again, I realized the clock said 9:10AM. I also saw Donna coming up the hall. Dr McCombs came in a bit later and said everything was great. I had no polyps or any issues at all. I did have a bit of diverticulosis which is common for a man my age. He told me he’d see me in five years. We even talked about the Iron Mom Half Marathon which we both run in. The nurse brought me some Diet Coke to drink and I was out before 10am. We grabbed Red’s Donuts on the way home because I was starving. I rested a bit and felt fine; I even managed a two mile walk later that afternoon.
To all my friends over fifty, please don’t put off having this done. It really isn’t that bad, it’s even easier than it used to be. It’s a lot better than developing colon cancer that this test could have detected much earlier and prevented. The only bad thing I can say about the whole thing is I’ll be SIXTY (Yikes!) when I have my next one.
