The anesthesia does mess with your head for a good many hours afterward. I thought I was pretty much over it and clear-headed just a couple of hours afterward – but in the following several days, I discovered various memory holes and other evidence of how out-of-it I was for the rest of the day.
My brother drove me home after the exam. I told him where my parking place was (I thought), but he parked in the wrong spot. The following day, there was a complaint about parking in somebody else’s spot. I had no idea we were parked in the wrong spot.
There were several other such little odd-ball brain lapses like that, IIRC.
I’d expect that the drugs or combinations of them would make a difference. I was asleep about 2 seconds after they went in and fully alert 5 minutes after waking up. No memories of anything in between obviously, but that was it for me. Clear headed and alert beyond that.
I honestly felt perfectly fine within 20 minutes of waking up. I ripped off a few work e-mails on the way home and responded to texts, etc. When I reviewed everything last night, I noticed numerous errors. Very weird.
I take a medication that interfered with my sleep quite badly when I started taking it. My GP and Endocrinologist came up with a sleeping pill that wouldn’t interfere with the Pharmakinetics of the primary drug. It let me sleep, but I felt like a zombie ALL THE TIME. Luckily it got me through the worst of it and I figured out how to sleep without it. Propofol was nothing like that for me.
To put a bow on it, my weight was back to 173.5 lbs. this morning. That didn’t take long. Of course, being a fan of boxing, it’s not surprising to me. Boxers sometimes rehydrate upwards of 10 pounds the day after weigh-in.
The first worst part was, as everyone says, the prep.
Second worst part was avoiding fiber and red dye for multiple days (I went the paranoid route, and probably started avoiding fiber sooner than I needed to).
Third worst part was the “surprise” pregnancy test. No one else has mentioned it, so maybe I’m weird or my doctor’s practice is, but I’m a woman over 45 and under 50, who still has regular menstrual periods, and having answered “yes” to that question, I was handed a cup to pee in.
Having had very little to drink that wasn’t part of the official prep, and nothing in the two plus hours before arriving at the facility, I had my doubts as to whether I had any pee available. But I managed, and then was shown to my bed and signed a bunch of paperwork, and at some point in that, I was told that the pregnancy test was negative. Good, because I would have been rather boggled if it had been otherwise.
I resumed eating normally as soon as I got home from the procedure, and felt normal basically at once, but did refrain from doing anything that would might show lapses in judgement.
The colonoscopy was clear, so I’ve got ten years before I have to worry about it again, which makes me happy.
A word from my good SIL, an RN who has regular colonoscopies because of family history and other indicators. In BC, the most common “cleansing procedure” is, as others have reported above, the Jerry can with the freeze-dried Fresca at the bottom. It is regarded as a “better practice” because many people took the small glass or pills but did not follow the instructions to drink a lot of water after. So they were sent home without the procedure, wasting everyone’s time and money. So it may be a version of Covid behaviour: because some people won’t do the easy things, we all have to do the more burdensome things.
I highly recommend using s straw with that jerry can, so the liquid doesn’t hit your tongue. Or just a tiny bit in the back. Makes a huge difference. I didn’t find it too bad. The great thing was that it was quick. I started after 7PM, and finished before 11PM.
