This was my daughter’s Thanksgiving dinner the year before last. She was in hospital being prepped for a colonoscopy the next day to determine whether she had Chron’s or ulcerative colitis (turned out to be the latter). It didn’t help that three different doctors had missed the diagnosis during the previous month, so by that time she couldn’t keep anything down under the best of circumstances. It took several hours to get the requisite amount into her system, and I found out just how inventive her vocabulary had become.
(As it happened, neither steroids nor immunosuppressives did the job, so she had to have another colonoscopy — the day after her 16th birthday. This time, though, they used a nasal tube; made a world of difference.)
When I had my first colonoscopy at age 16 in 1986, I had to drink a GALLON of Go-lytely (sp?). It tasted like saltwater. I never even liked to drink 8 ounces of water at a time, much less a whole gallon of saltwater!
After 20 years of having Ulcerative Colitis, I now have to do this every year. I skipped last year because I was pregnant. Thank you, Susie!
As another person who suffers from UC, I need to stress a couple things about the phospho-soda. 1) Get it as cold as you can, this really helps with the taste.
2) Dissolve it in the strongest tasting stuff you can find that still conforms to the doc’s instructions.
Oh, and if your insurance covers it, REMICADE is a wonderful treatment for UC if nothing else is working. every 8 weeks you get an IV infusion, and that’s it.
Another vote for chugging chilled phosphosoda as fast as possible, chased by something really, really sweet to wash away as much of the taste as possible.
By the time I’d finished my prep, not only was I completely cleared out, but I’d developed a loathing of beef and chicken broth.
black rabbit, if you have the need I’d like to pass onto you something which I won but fortunately have not needed. If Rysdad is in agreement I’d be more than willing to allow you to recieve this generous prize.
Great drug, when it works. But it doesn’t work for everybody.
I’ve had a few patients with such severe inflammatory bowel disease that they finally had total colectomies, and ended up grateful to have had them. Even the ones that needed colostomies.
Nasty disease, all too often. Fortunately there’s more therapies to try, to get it quieted down, then there used to be.
My youngest has had to have waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many courses of go-lytely in her lifetime. She’d love to need that stuff only once a year.
I tried to add this using the Edit function, but I must be typing too slowly today…
An additional note…
Our staff radiologists don’t allow our patients to use GoLytlely as an enema prep. It’s OK for a CT-scan prep in order for the colon to be empty, but they don’t like it for an enema prep because it leaves the colon too “slimy” for the barium to adhere well.
I dunno…each Radiologist has his or her own preferences, I guess.
When I had my run through with navy radiology [i swear, they used every piece of diagnostic equipment they owned just to give the radiology techs practice] I was given some ‘liquiprep kit’ that was a small 8 oz bottle of lemon lime crud [i did it as a single shooter to get it down fast] and 4 small red pills, that i was told to do at teh same time.
I crapped my brains out all freaking week. I did it sunday, had radiology monday and was scheduled for surgery for friday. Thursday came around and I was told to come in at noon so they could type and cross match me for the vampires, and to have some little discussion between the anesthetologist and myself. Despite continuing to drink my normal gallon of water a day I was so dehydrated they couldnt tap any blood out of me until on the 14th stick [between my freaking toes - that hurt like a motherfucker.] I was crapping STILL from the damned prep kit. Every hour on the hour, day and night. I was so damned cranky by thursday I changed my mind and told Doc Green that I wanted to be ubder totally instead of awake and kibbitzing like when I had my tubal ligation. I just wanted to get more than an hour of sleep in a row.
Never again will I do the 4 damned pills … just the drink works for me.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t clean out the entire colon, nor does it do it that well.
You need to be “squeeky clean” because, when they fill you up with barium, any remaining ‘material’ might look like what the docs call a “filling defect”—in other words, a mass (or tumor), or a number of other things. Further, any ‘leftovers’ may obscure something that might be important to find.
That’s what happened to my daughter. The first round or Remicade seemed to work (it’s a strange experience to burst into tears when the phone rings and you hear “Dad! Guess what! I had a piece of toast!”), but the uc came back worse than before. Fortunately, she’s young enough that a j-pouch was an option, so she was a “bag lady” for less than a year.
Indeed I am very thankful that the Remicade is working, because I have topped out on the other medications. My purpose is to postpone surgery as long as is possible, as I would like to keep my body as it was originally designed for as long as possible.
Oh yeah. Been there, done that. Twice, so far. (My mom died of colon cancer, so I get checked.) I also have to worry about reflux when my stomach gets really full. Double yuck.
