My First Colonoscopy

The summary: the prep went mostly better than expected, the procedure shows I'm fine but went worse than expected, the recovery went better than expected.

Low-fiber diet

This part was way fun. I started with chocolate milk as usual for breakfast.

At work, a co-worker got way too many fresh, hot cookies delivered to her for her birthday and so was sharing them. I was taking my first bite before I remembered that I was on a restrictive diet. But, it's America! I'm safe from fiber! I had one chocolate chip cookie (with a tiny bit of fiber from the cocoa) and one cinnamon sugar cookie (with a tiny bit of fiber from the cinnamon) and stayed away from the oatmeal raisin cookies.

For lunch I had bought some macaroni and cheese from Trader Joe's. I normally would never buy this because of white noodles. My cashier said he often got that for lunch at work. I told him that the packaging claims it's two servings. In the end I decided it counted as his mid-morning snack plus lunch plus mid-afternoon snack.

I brought a container to pack the second serving in to bring it home, just in case, but that was not needed. This might be the most delicious macaroni and cheese I have ever tasted. I even like it better than the stuff at Hyde Park Bar and Grill, which has seasoned breadcrumbs on top. This does not need seasoned breadcrumbs.

I will have to buy it again to let Robin taste it. And actually, it's way healthier than the cheese flavored ramen-noodle type stuff I sometimes buy for a guilty pleasure (whenever it's on sale for 28 cents or something) because it has no hydrogenated fats in it. (I think--better check.) If so, I'll switch over to TJ mac n cheese for my guilty pleasure, even though this costs more. It's a thing I have about once every three to six months.

Then a co-worker asked me if I'd had lunch already. Um, yes, two lunches. But she was inviting me to lunch at Kerbey Lane to celebrate the aforementioned birthday. So I came anyway for the socializing. I was quite full, so it was easy to resist getting anything there. The person who invited me called herself an idiot for having given me such late notice, but it worked out perfectly for me. The macaroni and cheese was probably more delicious, cheaper, and had less fiber than what I would have gotten had I ordered something there.

Then Robin wanted to go shopping, so I ended up at a store that sells donuts. I had told myself that if this happened, I would get a donut (normally I resist). So I had my favorite donut (chocolate-covered, custard-filled) and milk for dinner.

On the second day I had chocolate milk for breakfast as usual.

Then at work, there were leftover breakfast tacos up for grabs after an event. I remembered about my diet, but they were made with white tortillas! I got one with egg and cheese and one with egg and bacon. They didn't even have any bean and cheese ones to tempt me.

For lunch I had some plain fried rice I made from uncooked white rice that Robin had leftover from something and which I wouldn't let him throw out when he realized he wouldn't be using it.

For dinner, I baked up some crescent rolls from a can. Although I cooked them wrong, the non-burnt parts were pretty tasty. I ate some of them with a one-egg cheese omelete. Then I had chocolate milk again for a late-night snack.

So evil! But delicious!

(Note, in other UT jobs, this surprising-free-food phenomenon happened quite often, but in my current job it happens more like once every three months. So twice in two days is crazy!)

Liquid diet

I was worried about this part of the prep because I don't like to be hungry. It's not as bad as Sally--I can still live a basically normal life. I just can't concentrate well and don't like it.

But it wasn't so bad. For breakfast I pulled out my refrigerated Ensure Clear, Blueberry Pomegranate flavor. It tasted sort of like fruit and sort of like vitamins. I like that vitamin flavor, so I thought it was pretty good. But after the second sip I realized it was red. That color is forbidden! So I just had a big glass of water, either.

For lunch I had some broth from a box that Robin recommended as real broth and not just colored salt water. It smelled really good, but the taste was just okay because I'm afraid I really like my broth to be salted.

Then for my afternoon snack I drank a creme soda. So I never got so hungry at work that I counldn't concentrate enough to do it properly. Victory!

Medicine

I was also worried about the part where I'm supposed to mix a nasty-tasting laxative with some clear liquid and drink 8 ounces of it every fifteen minutes until I had drunk a gallon of it. I remembered that a gallon is not 64 ounces, like I always think it is in my head, but 128 ounces, which means it would take (almost) four hours to get down. I really don't like drinking huge doses of water. And I prefer huge doses of water over huge doses of other liquids.

My instructions were to mix the whole container of powder with a gallon of liquid, but I wanted to keep my options open. But it was annoying math to mix part of it with some of the liquid. I tasted the Gatorade-like stuff I had bought and I didn't like it much. The thought of drinking a gallon of it even without anything mixed in sounded kind of sickening.

So I put some of the powder in plain water and tasted it. I could barely taste it. So I mixed it all with a gallon of plain water. I figured if that was a mistake, I could find chasers. Also, Robin got me a big straw.

First I was supposed to take four pills with some water at 4:00. Then start the gallon-of-liquid regimen at 6:00. Robin was off at Spanish class, so I had the bathroom to myself. I set up a step-stool next to the toilet with my gallon jug of laced water, a glass (which actually has a line right at the 8-ounce mark), a kitchen timer, and a book. I thought it would be cool to have a tiny white table cloth over it!

Actually drinking the water was fine. I really could just barely taste the alien powder at all at first. By the last half, I was tasting a nasty aftertaste, but the actual swallows of water were still fine. I never used the straw. I'm so glad I didn't mix it with some sickly-sweet thing.

(Robin took a little taste and agreed it tasted much, much better than the soap-flavored stuff he'd had to use and that he could barely taste it at all.) So the stuff was Miralax (actually, I got the HEB store brand of it) in case you want to ask your doctor about it.

The toilet is not the most comfortable seating ever, but I really liked having a good book. I had remembered that popular books are more likely to be on the shelf of the university where I work during the summer and was finally able to get my hands on the first Longmire mystery. Thanks again to Laurie for the recommendation!

The timer was also an excellent idea. I could just read without watching the clock. When the timer went off, I would drink my glass of water, reset the time, and pour the next glass. Only one time I was into the book so deeply that it was 20 minutes between glasses.

The nurse had warned me that if I felt nauseated, I could wait up to a full half hour, but this never happened. Actually, I probably felt worst at the beginning, probably out of anxiety and hunger.

I didn't actually need the toilet until 7:10. I was drinking until 9:45 (actually 9:30 because apparently I was slightly overfilling my glass), but I was not emptying out. I wondered if I could figure out a way to sleep on the toilet. I tried sleeping on the kitchen floor (easy-to-clean linoleum). I went to bed at 12:30 and had to get up again. Finally I went to bed around 1.

Also, the color wasn't right, nor was it in the morning. So I started worrying that I wouldn't be clean enough and would have to try again another time.

The procedure

One of the things I got at check-in was an evaluation sheet and one of the questions on the sheet was what my favorite thing was. So I tried to pay attention to what that might be.

For example, I quite enjoyed the decor in the waiting room. Things matched well. And one wall was painted dark grey, and an adjacent wall was painted harvest gold, but the grey actually went a couple of feet into the harvest gold wall. That grey corner is where the TV was, so the background of the TV was all one color. So that was pretty cool.

When they called me into the back, it was cold. But they actually had a blanket warmer. Crazy. Everyone was very nice and informative.

The two things I wish I would have known ahead of time were a) I could wear my socks (so I should have worn thicker ones) and b) I could keep my stuff with me in a bag under the gurney (so I could have brought my own bag).

Another thing that surprised me is they wanted to put in an IV as a precaution in case they found later that they wished they'd had one. Meanwhile they just used water for rehydration. Robin said that the doctor told him that they most often recommend sedation for small Asian girls. I'm sort of build like a small Asian girl, though not quite that small, so I guess it was good to be ready to add sedation (or anything) in a hurry if they later wanted to.

They put me on a gurney in one room and wheeled me to a different room for the colonoscopy. This ride was surprisingly fun and might have been my favorite part of the visit.

I got to watch the whole thing on the big screen. I was pretty worried that I wasn't cleaned out enough, but I could see that the doctor had tools for additional washing and that it was still easy for him to see things.

He explained that the first part was the most uncomfortable but it didn't stay that way the whole time. Once he was past the first curve, it would get better. And he did most of the cleaning and inspecting on the way out rather than the way in because that was most comfortable.

Well the first part was indeed quite uncomfortable. The nurse in front of me (you lie on your side) told me to take deep breaths and let them out slowly. This did not seem to help, but it made her feel better, so I tried to do that.

After that, it was mostly uncomfortable or quite uncomfortable all the way in. I was gripping the bed rails tightly, and they had to ask me to change the position of my arms so the blood pressure monitor on one arm the temperature monitor on a finger of the other hand would work properly. I was telling myself I might want sedation next time.

On the way out it was much better. And there was nothing wrong in there.

I called my prep work mediocre, but the doctor called it good. Well, anything that's good enough not to have to reschedule is good enough, but I'd rather have done a very good job. I asked how I could do better next time. He said start earlier. He said women tend to have longer intestines, so it takes longer.

I asked the nurse if I seemed to have more trouble than other people who did not get sedated. She said, oh, no, I didn't cry, I did fine. That didn't directly answer my question, but it does seem like it feels pretty bad to some other people, too.

It did not feel like that to Robin at all. So, people are definitely different in that way.

The recovery

The ride back was not quite as fun--probably because I was on my side instead of on my back, though I wouldn't have expected that to make a difference.

In the recovery room I was shaking, probably partly from feeling cold and partly from having tensed my muscles up (aka sewing machine leg in rock-climbing parlance). The nurse brought me another freshly heated blanket and put it around my back. I told her I felt like I was in a spa--luxury living.

She brought me a small can of juice and a pamphlet on fiber. She took out my IV and everything. She made me sit on the edge of the bed for a couple of minutes. Then I got dressed and left.

The doctor said that in the olden days, people would feel distended and farty all day after the procedure, but with modern techniques, that really only lasts a few minutes. So now you could safely go to a restaurant on your way home from the procedure. And that was indeed true for me. It was clear that laxatives were still in my system, but it was definitely safe to be in public.

The recovery was basically instantaneous, unlike the one time I had sedation where the wake-up started with vomiting and shivering that blankets didn't help. It was so nice to just feel good right away and to just drive myself home and be allowed to make important decisions.

Though the only decision I really made was that I was in the mood for a big, juicy cheeseburger.

So now I'm of two minds about wanting sedation next time. Well, I have seven years to think about it.