The only thing worse than having a colonoscopy is preparing for one. At least most people are knocked out when they get the procedure. They wake up feeling great from the residual of muscle relaxants, knowing that it's all over and they can eat and drink again.
Ten years ago when I had my first colonoscopy, I refused to be to sleep. I was given enough meds to assure that I would be relaxed and awake. The monitor was right beside me to watch as the yards of camera on the end of the rotor router traveled to the end of the tunnel. I saw where my appendix would have been had it not been removed I thought back to that time, when Spike Jones had recorded Chloe, Cocktails for Two, and other gems played on the radio (this was before TV was in hospital rooms). I had been given a spinal and since my butt weighs more than my torso, my head had been elevated; I got the air bubble up my spine to produce the mother of all headaches. The sutures from the surgery (arthroscopy hadn't been invented yet, either) made not only laughing painful but smiling, as well. Everything anyone said or was broadcast was funny. It was later that the news invented violence, murders, and sadness.
But I digress. My instructions read that I should not take a long list of things I don't take anyway, like every known over-the-counter pain-reliever and anti-inflammatory. So many seemed like the 'in' thing, like Ecotrin, Bufferin, Nuprin, Motrin. I wasn't to take any iron, though I don't take that either. Three days before the procedure I was not to eat legumes, peas, carrots, tomatoes, watermelon or nuts. I read that too late and since my short term memory priority doesn't cover meals, I had no idea what I had eaten of those on the do-not-eat list which I changed to the do-not-tell list. If the government can make silly rules, I will,too, as well.
The whole day before the procedure only a clear liquid diet is allowed. The only things I allowed myself, so that I didn't have to drink things I don't normally drink, were coffee, tea and bouillon. Be evening I was trying to figure how I could turn the woodwork into clear liquid. At 7 PM as things shifted to no more clear fluids, but specifically 15 oz. of Citrate of Magnesia. Fortunately I don't find that taste too bad as it is sort of like Quinine Tonic on steroids with tartness added. The quantity, however, presents a problem. It should be followed within the next 2 hours by three 8 oz glasses of water. It would have been easier to just put the garden hose in my mouth until my stomach stretched to capacity.
The object is to have your intestines as clean and pure as a brand new and unused, PVC pipe. For anyone who has ever taken a dog to training school, the embarrassment of your dog having an 'accident' while in class is nothing to the embarrassment of having a faint tan hue seen by the camera lens in your colon..
The first 15 oz. of Citrate of Magnesia is followed by another round of the same five hours before the procedure, it is again followed by three 8oz glasses of water within two hours. By now your abdomen looks like one of those water-filled balloons that is deadly if you drop it off the roof onto a pedestrian. After cleaning out the Aegean stables of your colon, you are now ready to face (well not exactly face, I guess) the doctor who will do a 'wrong way Corrigan' looking for mines, in medical terms, polyps...or anything further along the disaster scale. Meanwhile, keep your eye on the goal...there is food to be had again when the all-clear is sounded at the end of the tunnel.
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