My colonoscopy is in 2 hours and I haven’t fallen asleep yet

Sorry I'm late, I was having an echocardiogram and PICC line check/flush. Not my idea of fun, but if I had the choice between that and the colonoscopy prep, I'll stick with mine. Now I hope you can rest and recover. Hugs to you.

Well then, your  timing was excellent! 

I was really dreading the prep day and it was as awful as i thought it would be! First off - no cream in my coffee. I didn’t hate black coffee so that was a win. I only ate broth and jello all day which was just awful. ?Broth is underwhelming and I’ll never eat it voluntarily again. Jello was ok. Then i had to take the awful tasting prep at 6pm. Was in the rest room for about 2 hours off and on, but was able to get some sleep. I had to get up at 5 am and take the n2nd bottle of prep + some water, but by then my insides were al empty.

So glad i had my a ppt scheduled for 7am to get it over with! My work BFF had hers today at 1pm - bless her heart!

We do that here too, but it is just a really basic screening, it only tests for the presence of blood in the stool - if there's blood then you get advised to have a colonoscopy.
If you have seen a doctor and have any symptoms (blood/pain/family history/anaemia etc etc) then we all still have to have colonoscopies because the mail in one does nothing to test for any sort of cancer or pre-cancerous lesions. It also don't give any information about bowel diseases (celiac disease), infection, diverticular disease etc.

In short, that friend is grossly over exaggerating what the mail in test is capable of and that it means people don't need to have colonoscopies.


Personally the procedure was a minor blip on my radar, drank the stuff, pooped a few times, went to sleep, woke up, went and had the procedure...then a friend picked me up and we went out for lunch. It wasn't the most fun I've ever had...but if I was told I needed one tomorrow, it wouldn't bother me at all.

I had my first one ever yesterday. I'm thankful I googled prep suggestions because I think it went easier than it could have because I went to a low fiber diet instead of just not having nuts, seeds, popcorn, lettuce, etc. two days before the procedure. I had the prep drink Clenpiq which was two bottles of "cranberry" flavored drink, but each bottle was only 8 to 10 oz (can't remember, but they were not big). The nurse suggested I start earlier than the instruction say in order to get it done earlier than the morning of, just to be safe and so I could sleep better/more. So the prep part wasn't hard at all...just weird...I'm not sure I'll ever forget the sensation of what a clean water release felt like!

The day of the procedure was easy too. The hardest part was getting an IV put in as the first try created a bubble, but at least it didn't hurt. I was knocked out shortly after the doctor administered the good drugs and I barely remember much before getting up to get dressed so I could get wheeled out to DH's car. Apparently I was awake enough to unlock my phone and call DH, but I don't remember any of the conversation between DH, the nurse and the doctor (or that the doctor was even in the room!) I remember parts of the drive home, but once home I was in good shape. I did take a long nap, but felt good all day.

Today was a different story. I knew it wouldn't be easy to get back to "regular" once I was eating solid food again, but today's bathroom visits were much worse than the prep trips. Naturally I was at work, but once I got home in the early afternoon I was able to just relax in bed and felt much better.

I was surprised to get my results back so soon--I did have 3 polyps that they removed during the procedure and they were all benign! But I do have to go back in 5 years instead of 10...but I'm glad I went ahead and did it.