TMI Tuesday

I had my colonoscopy today.  The last time I had one was March 2005 but since I turned 70 this year it was time for another one and I didn't need to wait for the 10 year mark.  The colonoscopy was a piece of cake, especially since I slept through the whole thing. Despite my attempt at trying to watch the screen I felt my eyes get heavy and that was the end of it.

The day before is a different story.  The prescription for that day was to take 4 Dulcolax tablets in the afternoon, 2 at 12:00 and the other 2 at 3:00.  Then mix the Miralax with your beverage of choice (from the list) and drink 8 8oz glasses every 15 minutes.  I decided to go to Joann's that morning to buy the fleece that I needed to finish my quilt.  I was late leaving the house so I didn't take my first 2 pills until 1:00.  I took the next 2 at 3 staying on the 3 hour later schedule.  Nothing happened.  At 6:30 I decided I didn't want to wait until 7 to start the Miralax so having mixed them up in the morning I poured my first glass and chugged it.  The instructions were to drink as fast as you can.

I have to say the taste and texture weren't as nauseating as the GoLYTELY I took 9 years earlier.  The GoLYTELY was salty and sort of thick.  Even though I chose the lemon flavor and even added additional Crystal Light to hide the flavor all it did was make it impossible for me to drink lemonade to this day.  So the first glass went well as did the next three.  After that it became more difficult.  The taste wasn't good anymore, even though I chose two different flavors so I could alternate them.  Plus the bloating from drinking so much in such a short time wasn't fun either.  It said if you experienced discomfort you could slow it down.  It took me 1 1/2 hours to finish the rest.  My last dose only had 6 oz since I had drunk some of it earlier in the day before mixing it.  As fast as it went down it came up plus more.  "Oh, oh," I thought.  Since I still hadn't hit the toilet and it was already 9:30 my biggest fear was that they wouldn't be able to do the colonoscopy because I wasn't cleaned out enough and I would have to drink that stuff all over again on another day.

Finally at 11:30 PM it worked.  I won't go into the gory details but I didn't have to sit on the toilet all night.  Just then and I got up a couple of times during the night.  I started to drink a lot of water between bathroom visits since I read that a lot of liquids helped the cleansing process.  The plain water tasted great but I was still worried about not being clean enough for my 8:30 AM appointment.  However, all's well that ends well and I was good enough to pass the test.

The people at the Wilson Health Center couldn't have been nicer.  I was able to sit in my bed, with a heated blanket, how wonderful, using my iPhone to listen to a book and take some pictures until it was my turn.
This is me before they moved  my bed to a sitting position and after I got my IV.

 The whole procedure didn't take very long because before I knew it I was wheeled back into my cubicle space, awakened by the nurse and Larry joined me.  The best part was that it was just like giving blood, juice and cookies after.  I was still pretty out of it because I didn't remember about the cookies and juice until I was looking at my pictures.

Things to remember for the next time, which for some reason is in 5 years.  Do I have something that needs watching?  Start drinking liquids a few days earlier and also start everything earlier than they say so in case I'm slow it won't start so late.