Depends on the regimen your doctor likes to give. I’ve never done the Miralax or Gatorade or GoLytely. I’ve had three colonoscopies and my doctor prefers a prep where the day before is only clear fluids to eat, and then the evening before the procedure I take shots of milk of magnesia every 30 minutes for a couple hours, then a large dose of Dulcolax (8 tabs? 10?), nothing to drink after midnight (even water), and then a fleet enema in the morning.
I always drink a ton of water the day before, but I still get somewhat dehydrated. I’m usually a really easy subject to get blood draws from or start an IV, but whenever they do an IV before a colonoscopy it takes four to eight tries by several staff members to find a vein that doesn’t collapse or blow out, and they said this is probably because I get dehydrated.
Fun note: many people had told me how horrible it is to do colonoscopy prep, but I had my first 'scope done to diagnose what turned out to be Crohn’s disease, the effects of the prep were probably only 20% worse than my average day at the time. So I wasn’t complaining about the prep too much.
Edited to add: I learned recently that the screenwriter for the movie Aliens got the idea for the gut-busting alien from a particularly bad bout of abdominal pain he had from his Crohn’s disease. When I heard this I immediately agreed. Now it’s my go-to description if people ask me what it can feel like when it’s bad.
Oh Man - I’m going for my first colonoscopy three weeks from now and not looking forward to it. The deed will be done at 6 p.m., and I’ll have to stop eating by 10 a.m. the previous morning. Given that I usually eat every three hours, quickly become seriously hungry if I don’t, and have a history of fainting without any apparent cause save for low blood sugar, it might be a real struggle. In addition to 3+ liters of clear liquids, I’m supposed to down two bottles of Phosphoral to empty my bowel.
I’m surprised at the comments of being knocked out through the whole deal. My doctor didn’t hint at anything like it, and the instructions I have say I can have a “pre-medication to ease the examination” if I want. I thought this equaled to a mild relaxant or some such.
I, too, wonder what the low-residue foodstuffs mentioned upthread might be. I was already planning to “load up” on food before the fast and emptying-out, but guess that’s a really bad idea.
Well, if the “pre-medication” is optional, i.e. you have a choice of not taking it, then there is often a mild relaxant option rather than being entirely knocked out, it wouldn’t hurt to ask
Loading up beforehand is A VERY VERY BAD IDEA. It’s much smarter to cut back a day or two before prep day, dwindle down your intake so that you have less bulk to clear out, eat low-residue foods (Google will lead you to multiple descriptions of same) and not much of them.
By the way, here I am two days post-scope, having my first solid food since then, and being very cautious about it. One banana and that’ll be it for a couple of hours, then maybe a little macaroni and cheese. The bowels got back to work yesterday, even without anything more than broth and juice to work with, and I had – you’ll never guess! – bouts of the squirts. My doc’s nurse told me this is normal. Sigh. Even now I hear the volcano rumbling.
One bit of advice: For the next few days after your colonoscopy, it’s a good idea to avoid carbonated beverages. A really good idea.
I got knocked out because I was having both ends looked at. I think knocking the patient out makes it easier for the doctor and team to get things done.
Also, Versed and Fentanyl (sp?) are my bestest friends when I need to get something unpleasant done to me. They’ve helped me through root canals and tooth extractions, and when I had the Lump in my right nipple removed, they were there for me. I woke up as the doctor was stitching up my nipple, and I was not worried, and I didn’t feel any pain. My only complaint was that the side of my nose itched, and one of the OR people scratched it for me.
What does it say about Dopers that this thread has almost as many views as (and more replies than) the thread titled “Damn you, Abilify™, you DE-bilified my BOWELS!!”?
I’m perfectly happy to be totally knocked out, DrDeth, if for no other reason than that it gets the whole thing over so much (subjectively) faster. You go in, get set up, close your eyes, and boom! Done.
It’s impossible to wake up from one in Japan. They don’t give you ANYTHING in the first place. Only the bowel motility stopper.
When I needed one it wasn’t urgent so I went to four or five hospitals till I found one that would agree to give me twighlight sedation. My husband had to have one with nothing as do most of the rest of the population. He came out ashen, a sort of sweaty green colour.
This is typical of a country that praises “gaman” (endurance). You get to gaman whether you want to or not. No pain relief is available AT ALL for childbirth unless you have a cesarean. I did, thank goodness, though the after pain management was close to nonexistent…
True (more or less), but you still need to maintain regular fluid/electrolyte intake. Which is difficult if the prep makes you feel very “full” (therefore not-thirsty) or worse, makes you nauseous. Old-school prep regimens that involved drinking a gallon of fluid, and/or a really vile-tasting laxative brew, often did have those effects, and many places have phased them out for that reason. The Gatorade/Miralax prep is only a half-gallon and Miralax is tasteless, so fewer patients show up dehydrated and have to be rescheduled because they faint or no one can raise a vein for the IV.
Someday I want to meet the person or persons who gave it that name and force feed them about 4 jugs of the stuff. And then pour alcohol on the salt burns the jet motor effect leave in its wake. And after that I’ll start getting mean with them.
QFT. I dislocated and had a nice Colles fracture in both wrists (long story) about a year after I came to Japan. Reduction was done with absolutely nothing for the pain after a 30–40 minute ambulance ride. I was coming out of shock at that point. I’m very lucky that I have a high tolerance for pain. I still gritted my teeth and said, “Fuck, that hurts!” when they pulled everything back into place.
It required surgery to pin the pieces of radius back together. Pain management afterward was Tylenol with codeine, in a dosage more suitable for a Japanese person than someone my size. Even in good shape with low body fat, I am about 10 kg heavier than the average for Japanese males. Yeah, that was fun.
I had to drink Golytely when I was a kid. Not being all that eager for the colonoscopy in the first place and nearly gagging every time I tried to drink that hell-syrup, I told the attending nurses that I “Just couldn’t do it,” imagining that I could effectively halt the procedure by fiat. After all, what are they going to do?
As it turns out, they had a backup plan.
Sympathizing with my plight of not being able to drink the stuff, they went to Plan B: snaking a tube through my nasal cavity and down my throat. The Golytely was administered through that tube via drip, making the process last far longer than it would via traditional ingestion. Wheeling what was essentially an IV drip apparatus threaded though my nose from the hospital bed to the lavatory all night was by far the worst night of my life. To say the least, that experience gave me the extra resolve to drink that crap orally when I had to go back for my check up months later.
