An Idiot’s Guide to Colonoscopy Prep

January 8, 2020.Reading time 9 minutes.

After coming up clean in my first colonoscopy, I’d like to take a minute to inform the masses regarding the truth about colonoscopy prep. First, if you’re over 45, get a colonoscopy! Colo-rectal cancer is called the silent killer. Just to start off the conversation in terms my fellow idiots will understand, I will refer to it as Silent But Deadly. (** I used to think the age was 50, but several have commented that you should get your first colonoscopy at 45, or even 40.)

Second, a colonoscopy is nothing to be afraid of. The prep, however, is something worth dreading. But it is massively important. You don’t want to waste a day of fasting and flatulation only to be rejected because you aren’t empty. Loosen up and do it right.

I want to be straightforward about this topic because online information is as twisted as my intestines evidently are. Of course, when you Google “colonoscopy prep,” a fine bowtie-clad doctor from the Mayo Clinic will tell you how important it is while somehow keeping a straight face. But this will be of absolutely no help when you’re in the middle of your fight and frantically type, “HOW LONG WILL THE SQUIRTS LAST?” into your browser. Google gave me a quote from the little sea turtle in Finding Nemo… which was oddly appropriate for that dark hour.

But I digress.

Here are some experiential thoughts regarding colonoscopy prep that I hope will help my fellow man.

Pre-prep is essential. You’re going to need to select a toilet and set up a bivouac sight nearby. I’ve compiled a list of things to have in close proximity to your camp. It is important that you collect these items prior to starting your prep – once you start, there’s no going back.

1. Plenty of toilet paper. Do not scrimp here! I recommend the extra soft, cuddly, teddy bear, silky cotton variety with aloe. Man was not meant to wipe as much as you will over the next 24 hours.
2. Diaper rash cream. See point 1.
3. At least a pallet of disinfectant wipes. Things will happen that you don’t want to have to explain later. You might also want to keep a step ladder handy if you have high ceilings.
4. 2-3 black garbage bags. There will be items to destroy or dispose of with impunity.

If you live on a septic tank, you might want to have it drained prior to your prep.
The fasting is very important. As you will experience, there are already things milling around inside of which you were unaware. I assure you – you don’t want to add the tiniest grain of rice to it.
Wear clothes that you don’t care about. It’s just not worth it.

I drank my first sulfate cocktail at 6 pm the night before. Results may vary, but it took about 50 minutes before I heard the first rumble. As I sauntered to the bathroom, I thought I felt my scapula drop toward my pelvis and picked up the pace. That was wise. In fact, you may want to be within a few steps of porcelain as soon as you imbibe. It all happens so fast.

I don’t want to be disgusting, but as a veteran, I’ve fired many automatic weapons, including a 50-caliber machine gun with a butterfly trigger, and nothing… NOTHING I’ve ever shot had the recoil I felt from the first salvo of the evening. Sticking with the munitions metaphor, this is full automatic, friends. And don’t get comfortable anywhere else because reload time is astoundingly brief.

There is no need to take a book or magazine in there because after a few sessions, you might not have a will to live, much less acquire knowledge.

As this goes on, I promise you will be searching the phase that netted me Squirt’s jump instructions. Here is my answer and I hope it will get to the front page of Google: This lasted a little over three hours for me – add 20 minutes until the tears stopped and another 10 for a meager attempt at clean-up and dignity retrieval.

As you tentatively retreat from the combat zone, leave the path clear because you may need to go back. Somehow, I was able to sleep that night. But it wasn’t a trusting slumber. I was very dubious of myself and the possibility of a recurrence. If you’re married, I would say this would be a good night to sleep alone. The stakes are high here, and unless your marriage is 100% bulletproof, you don’t want to risk it. Even the strongest relationship could falter should you soil your spouse.

This is my first (and maybe only) sound piece of advice: You might want to start your prep an hour earlier. As long as you can stick to the fast the next day, an earlier prep would make it easier to go to bed with some assurance. Rumor has it some preppers have been awake at 2 – 3 a.m. nervously trying to sing their rectum to sleep.

In the morning, I got up and drank my second cocktail. It wasn’t nearly as bad. Oh, there were more fireworks. But maybe my mind, body, and soul had just given up by then.

Warning: A warm shower might feel tempting, but it also may lull you into a state of relaxation from which you cannot recover unspoiled. Wet tile is hard to navigate quickly, and I can almost promise that you will have disposed of your bathmat in a black trash bag the night before, so it will offer no traction. You’ve been warned.

The colonoscopy itself went off without a hitch. Once you get over the fact that the other three people in the room are involved in inserting a large tube in your anus, it really just feels like a picnic with friends. There’s Propofol and then you wake up rested. Your friends are gone. The picnic is over.

It is odd to have a nice-looking young lady command you to fart before you can go home. I never went on a date like that as a young man, but it worked out.

You might be tempted to think that this will jumpstart a weight-loss regimen. After all, I lost five pounds during the process. But it’s not going to happen because your body hates you now. The body is designed to minimize loss and what you just did makes it feel like you are undermining its mission. So it will hold onto that cheeseburger and large fries you grabbed on the way home for months. In fact, your body is going to slow down it’s metabolic process like a bear in hibernation.

The problem is that you’ll keep eating simply because your prep is done and you can. If things go okay, you don’t have to do it again for five years. Of course, the memory, and possibly some of the destruction, will linger…

Playing Doctor

June 10, 2015.Reading time 4 minutes.

When you were a kid, did you ever play the doctor game? Just a few friends together in a quiet room. It is one of the few games boys and girls could play together. Before your mind goes a-wandering, I’m talking about the electric board game that buzzes when you touch the sides. Operation – “the whacky doctors game, batteries not included.” I used to love that game. I don’t think I ever owned it, but a neighborhood pal did.

We aren’t allowed to have it in this home. When she was little, the concept freaked one of my daughters out so badly that she wouldn’t have slept had it resided under the same roof as her.

Although I have no medical training whatsoever, I would like to operate someday. I wouldn’t bluff my way into an operating room ala Frankie in Catch Me if You Can. I’m thinking more like a right place, right time scenario where I have to do an emergency tracheotomy while being given instructions by a tense doctor over the phone. Or does that only happen on television?

Seventeen years ago, I thought my surgery had arrived. Labor came quickly for daughter # 2. I pushed our little mini-van to its limit getting to the hospital and barely made it. She was born eighteen minutes from the time I wheeled momma through the door. Rats! Well, maybe that would have been a poor choice of first operations. Those stakes were very high and that patient was pretty surly – made even angrier by the fact that an unnamed person didn’t get her to the hospital in time for an epidural.

I totally could have done it, though.

I now have an app on my phone from the Red Cross to guide me. It’s a decision tree that asks questions to diagnose basic maladies. If you answer “yes” to more than one it almost always tells you to call 911. When I read the questions to someone, I don’t panic and my voice remains very calm and assuring – which makes feel like I’m pretty much a doctor.

A second opportunity presented itself recently. My brother-in-law started having pain in his abdomen. Rather than come to me, he went the traditional medicine route and was told he needed his gallbladder removed. Disappointing. After scouring the internet for the actual location of the organ, I decided this was my chance.

He seemed very dismissive of my offer at first. In fact, he barely paid attention. I chalked this up to pain. He just couldn’t think clearly. When the date of the surgery came, the so-called “professionals” had a little trouble and couldn’t perform the operation arthroscopically. So they had to cut him open, which led to complications and a ten day stint in the hospital.

Serves him right. I could have done it. I even ordered a new Ginsu knife and everything. While a full recovery was not guaranteed, the billing rate was substantially less than the one he got and he would have been able to stay at home. Besides, just think of the joy he would have brought me.

So if healthcare costs have got you down and you are looking for a cheap, extremely dubious alternative, look me up. Unlike most docs, I will be waiting for you instead of making you wait.