Does anyone else find it ironic that they call the laxative “GoLytely”? Though I suppose “GoExplosively” would be a bigger challenge for the marketing team.
I had my first colonoscopy a few weeks ago. I agree with everyone who said it’s pretty much a non-event.
I personally found the GoLytely pretty inoffensive. Despite what everyone says about drinking it cold, I found it easier to drink at room temp – probably because I could chug it that way. In fact, I would have preferred it without the artificial lemon flavor. It’s just kind of salty tasting.
The best part was having an excuse to take a long nap when I got home and not feeling guilty about it.
Everyone has covered things thouroughly. A possible addition is that if your doctor asks you to sign a statement saying that you agree beforehand that he can remove any pollops that he finds, and that there might be bleeding and a list of various possible side effects and things that can go wrong, don’t let it upset you. The more upsetting a possibility sounds, the less likely it is to happen. The typical result is finding nothing.
I had mine at a hospital outpatient clinic and I’m trying to remember if they made me fill out an Advance Directive, or if I’m conflating that with other things I’ve had done at that hospital. Oh, well. If an Advance Directive does happen to be part of the paperwork, it’s not because they’re expecting anything to happen. They’re expecting everything to be fine.
i found white grape juice. all the difference in the world. the mix is actually drinkable to my taste buds as long as it’s bone-numbingly cold.
also, make sure your doc is fully on board with making sure YOU are comfortably in lalaland for the procedure. as previsouly mentioned, a scoping w/o the good drugs is Unpleasant.
i have had issues for years and was recently diagnosed with microscopic collegenous colitis. yippee. and i thought IBS was bad… :rolleyes:
long story short, i was in so much discomfort, that for the diagnostic scoping back in november, i pretty much demanded i be put Majorly out for the count. i flat-out told my gastro doc that at 5’10" and nearly 200 pounds, whatever the top end limit was for the drugs they were planning to give me, i wanted to be at that limit. i had no other plans other than to sleep it off.
so they did. in point of fact afterward, my innards hadn’t felt that good in weeks. 
and iirc, i slept about 12 hours afterward.
don’t be afraid to request they up the ante if you are in any kind of pain or discomfort. life is too short for that.
I think GoNuclear or ToiletTsunami would be even more accurate. As for marketing, I don’t think that substance has an upside that’s much of a selling point to anyone but healthcare professionals.
Bri2k
Welcome to the club! I had my first last year (at not-quite-51)… interestingly, my doc isn’t too pushy about making her patients do this at the recommended age of 50, but I needed to see a gastro for esophageal issues and figured might as well do north-and-south in one session.
Well lucky me, North is just fine, South however had a polyp of a pre-cancerous sort so I get to do it all over again (lucky Typo Knig - I nagged him to schedule his, after that; his South is just fine but his North is precancerous!).
I dreaded two things: drinking the prep, and getting the IV (I have very bad veins). The prep was solved by doing a 2-day liquid diet, and taking a pill-based prep. I have major textural issues and knew if I had to drink even a half-gallon of salty slime-water, it would not have worked. Instead, I got to swallow a quarter pound of horse pills every 15 minutes, washed down by a large glass of my least favorite flavor of Gatorade. Still I think it was an improvement.
The IV turned out to be a nonproblem as well - luckily, the nurse who did it happened to learn in a NICU, sticking preemies. So even my craptacular veins were no challenge (unlike when I had surgery earlier in the year and it took 2 people 3 tries to get the damn thing going).
The sitting on the toilet for most of an evening (then most of the next morning) wasn’t especially fun either, but really not too much of a problem. Hint, though: don’t put the toilet lid down. You do NOT want ANY delays. Just sayin’.
And make sure you have a bathroom dedicated to YOU AND YOU ALONE. No, there is no time for a housemate to dash in and brush his teeth or shower.
The morning prep had me in a bit of a panic: it was almost time to head out, and I was still, um, “going”. I was set to grab a trash bag to put on my friend’s car seat, and a change of clothes. Luckily, things stopped JUST in time.
I am still tasting that stuff almost a year later. I cannot conceive that there is nothing they can do to make it taste less vile. It is like drinking hypersalienated snot. (I’ll try to remember that white grape juice thing.)
The rest of it, not such a big deal.
I’ve had two.
I really can’t understate how awful the prep was for me. It doesn’t just ‘‘taste bad’’ … I can’t drink too much of that stuff without starting to throw it back up. The bottle I had last time said that vomiting is a side-effect for 50% of patients. And the advice for people who throw up is more or less, ‘‘suck it up and keep drinking.’’ That stuff is so bad… at one point I remember thinking I was basically torturing myself. I’ve never been able to finish a whole jug of the stuff, but it did the trick anyway.
I would advise just sitting on the toilet while you drink it. The first time I thought I could hang out on the couch waiting for it to take effect and I didn’t make it to the bathroom on time. Trust me. You don’t want that to happen. Just take a stack of books, sit on the toilet drinking your torture juice and expect to be there for a few hours.
The procedure itself is nothing. I was totally out the first time. Once I woke up just long enough to cry out in pain and they put me out again. No pain after, just good as new.
The second time I woke up giggling. I couldn’t stop. They had done a bunch of little biopsies that time, though, so I was sore as hell for a day or two.
I’m 28 now. I hope to hell by the time I’m old enough to require these annually, they have done something about that horrible prep drink.
I think that the barium solution is worse than the GoLytely, but that might be just my reaction to it. The stuff I had to drink for a liver scan fell somewhere in between the barium and GoLytely.
Yes, my innards have been THOROUGHLY mapped out.
For what it’s worth, some doctors prescribe the Gatorade + whole bottle of Miralax regime vs. the prescription crap. While Gatorade is not my drink of choice, it would, I think, be preferable (and the main ingredient in that go-not-lytely-at-all crap is the same thing as Miralax anyway!).
I asked my gastro about that and he said that the prescription stuff was better for the electrolytes, that while most people are just fine with the Gatorade version, he didnt like it. I suppose if I insisted “Gatorade or nothing!” he might have to give in.
Oh - another thing with my prep, which may or may not have been overkill: in addition to 2 days liquid diet, I had to take Dulcolax on the evening of the first day. “gentle stimulant”, hah! (no, it wasn’t agonizing, but it was slightly too sudden, if you know what I mean).
I am the only person I know who doesn’t have any real reaction to the meds. I recollect everything they did and said, even when they told me I ‘wouldn’t remember this’.
They gave me extra this last time (two weeks ago) for a total of 150 microgms of fentanyl and 4 mgs versed, and I didn’t even get woozy. I will not do it again unless I get a doctor who understands that I really really have a tolerance to these drugs. It was horrible.
Have had more than one colonoscopy and the actual procedure was a piece of cake. They wheeled me into the procedure room, put something in my IV to knock me out, and I woke up later, all done. I had no memory of what happened during the actual colonoscopy. The doctor will go over your results before you leave, but be sure your friend/spouse is there when that happens. You may not remember any of it later. The weirdest part for me was how little I remember about that day when I had colonoscopy #1. I remember waking up and leaving the clinic, but have no memory of what the doctor told me or the ride home. As others have already pointed out, the hardest part of a colonoscopy is the prep the day before to clean out your colon. Other than that, it’s not difficult at all, and worth the peace of mind about a lethal disease that can be so easily prevented.