Once one reaches a certain age, one starts getting referred for colonoscopies. This happened a few years ago, and in fact I'm a couple of years overdue for my third, but they had a slot open up so I had mine today. As usual, the prep requires that you spend the whole day before (i.e. yesterday) eating nothing but clear gelatine and drinking only clear liquids (although, apparently, both tea and coffee count, provided no milk). This gets old very fast. I made up three bowls of jello/jelly with three different kinds of the allowed clear juice, but the apple one was really not very palatable:
Then, when 6 PM rolls around, the real fun begins. You get given a prescription of a large plastic jug with powder in it to which you add 4 litres of water. Then you have to drink 8 oz (yes, they do mix metric and imperial in the instructions) every 15 minutes until you've finished about 3/4 of the jug. After about 90 minutes, the waterworks begin. At first it's the most disgusting thing you've ever seen (outside of maybe the motorway service toilets that Matt had a summer job cleaning in his late teens) but the color slowly lightens until eventually it's supposed to be, for lack of a better comparison, chicken broth color. Eventually the torrents stop so that you can go to sleep, but you have to set your alarm for 5 AM when you have an hour to consume the remaining 1/4 of the liquid. This means running to the toilet every 10 mins or so until about 7:30 (in my case) at which point I dropped off and then woke with a start at 9:22 realizing I had to leave at 9:45. I picked up my volunteer driver (they won't allow you to have a colonoscopy unless you have someone with you who has to wait in the waiting room and drive you home - as it's not really feasible for this to be Jami, I prevailed on our favorite ex-student who lives two blocks away) and off we went!
No comments:
Post a Comment