Not this ass, your ass.
Do not fear the colonoscopy. All they do is ram a long, flexible, roto-rooter snake all the way up your hindquarters and take lots of pictures. They then threaten to post those pictures on the internet if you don’t pay a certain amount of money.
Okay, maybe not. But here’s what many sadistic doctors will require of you:
For about a week before the ass-reaming, you’re not allowed to eat certain foods, such as nuts, seeds, corn, and beans. You’re also not allowed to take certain OTC medications, such as aspirin, Motrin, or anything else that thins the blood. Also, you can’t take vitamins or OTC supplements, such as fish oil.
The day before the sadistic procedure you can’t eat food. You may only drink clear liquids (liquids you can see through), such as chicken broth and apple juice. You can drink tea or coffee, but without milk or creamers. You can also eat jell-o and popsicles, as long as they aren’t red or purple.
Around noon you have to take a laxative, then start drinking an aquarium’s amount of salty, nasty-tasting electrolytes.
The day of the ass-reaming, you continue your fast, and hope for an early appointment time, so you can eat as soon as possible. Meanwhile, you must drink even more of the saline electrolytes. You’ll drink so much of this crap, you’ll feel like you’re floating down a sewer.
By this time your toilet and bowels will have gotten a good workout, and you will be clean as a wet-wipe, inside. But your feelings of pride at this accomplishment will be eclipsed by much stronger sensations of lassitude, hunger, and crabbiness from not having food for the past two days.
Congratulations! The worst is over! Now it’s time for the actual ass-reaming. This will seem anti-climactic after all the difficult prep work you’ve put yourself through.
So they make you strip, and give you a flimsy, worthless gown to wear. Then they wheel you into the room where you get the treatment. This room will be packed with many doctors, nurses, and patients. Yep, you’re just one asshole among many at this point.
They’re gonna jab you with a needle to make you go night-night. But before you drift off, they’ll rip the flimsy gown off your ass like the unveiling of a sculpture. Now you are exposed to everyone in the room: doctors, nurses, other patients (who are probably sleeping, but you never know)–I mean everyone. As the blast of vulnerable feelings, shame, and embarrassment hits you, the anesthesia also hits you, and you conk out.
Next thing you know, you’re waking up and the nurse is telling you to get dressed. Your designated driver whisks you to the nearest restaurant. As you devour food, you do your best to steer the table-talk away from what you just went through.
Because this shit is nobody’s damn business.
Categories: Health
Chasing Unicorns 
A good public service, Tippy. I actually have to get an abbreviated version of this test annually — I call it simply an “oscopy” because I have no colon. It is a metaphoric pain in the ass, but not a physical one.
As my dad used to say, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
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Thanks. Sounds like a real inconvenience to have to go in once a year. I imagine you must get pretty tired of it.
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I have a less awful prep. It is a pain, but I have problems when I DON’T do it. Sooooooooooo.
Plus propofol makes me feel wonderful.
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Yes, my wife just had the procedure a few days ago. She commented on how nice the propofol made her feel. She could see how Michael Jackson could’ve gotten hooked.
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And he died happy. (A bit young though, sadly).
I have said that to several doctors administering it to me. They never appreciate my humor.
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While I’ve never thankfully had that done, the prep work I went through before I had my bladder removed was just as bad if not worse. Add in an enema, after two days of fasting and all the laxatives, then add in copious amounts of antibiotics that when you’re that empty just make you hurl. So you hurl and they make you take them again…Then when you wake up, you have no bladder, you’re in the worst pain of your life and you continue another 8 days without food or fluids. You have a tube in your nose that hurts like hell and you have tubes everywhere else that hurt. You’re only allowed to have that tube ripped out of you when you’re able to ahem..fart..
The stomach tube is also ripped out of you at some point. I think that was more painful then the surgery itself. Good times.
Hope all’s okay.
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Tippy, this was an amazingly accurate picture of getting one’s ass reamed. For the record, I spent exactly one day of my nursing career assisting GI docs with colonoscopies. Here’s what I learned: 1) sedated people do nothing but fart and giggle. 2) if you cheat on the prep, the doc will make you come back in 3 years instead of 10. 3) that job is NOT for me. š
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You’d have to have a pretty strong nose to handle that job. I don’t know how anybody could do it. On the other hand, it seems to me like most nursing jobs or medical jobs involve getting yourself nose deep into something disgusting. I admire you nurses. You earn every penny of your pay, in my view.
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I went in for my first colonoscopy the same week my mother had surgery for colon cancer. I’m ok with the indignities of the procedure if it means any issues I might have are detected early.
The part I feared the most was fasting – I really, really like food. A lot. I couldn’t imagine not eating for upwards of 2 days, but I survived. However, I think if there was any justice in the world, I should have lost at least 10 lbs for the ordeal š
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The fasting is tough to take, indeed.
And I agree that it’s worth going through the indignities. I once read in Consumer Reports, that the colonoscopy is one of the few routine tests that is considered worth the risks, for its preventative effects.
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