Hey! Get a camera up your butt! IT’S GOOD FOR YOU
One of my personal quests is to get everybody to get colonoscopies.
A colonoscopy has an insanely high benefit-to-inconvenience ratio. It’s not just diagnostic, it’s preventative. If they find polyps (which are basically little fleshy growths in your colon), they remove them with a quick little snip snip right there during the exam. Polyps can become cancerous if left in there, so this is actually preventing you from getting colon cancer, which is the FOURTH most common type of cancer after breast, lung and prostate.
It can also find actual cancer present, but if you’re getting regular exams, they’ll find it early, and treatment is very effective and often pretty easy. My dad had a lil bit of colon cancer but they literally just snipped it out, no radiation or chemo needed, and he’s good to go. If he hadn’t gotten a colonoscopy, he’d probably be dead right now, or he’d have had to go through much more radical treatments.
A regular colonoscopy is one of the most powerful tools in our medical arsenal to prevent a serious illness.
BUT LORI, ISN’T THIS UNCOMFORTABLE, IT’S LITERALLY A CAMERA UP YOUR BUTT.
Yes. Yes, it is. But you won’t care because you’ll be OUT COLD. They knock you out for a colonscopy with a quick-acting and quick-recovery sedative. I am talking about this right now because I had this procedure TODAY. My appointment was at 1030. I think they actually wheeled me into the scoping room at around 1100, and I walked out of the clinic just before noon. I woke up from the sedation and was totally alert within ten minutes. Had a nice lil nap.
Most gastroenterologists recommend now beginning colonoscopies starting at age 45, and getting one every 5 years, or more often depending on the results. But if you have family history, your PCP could refer you for one much earlier. I know a guy who started getting them at 25 because his uncle died of colon cancer, and based on the degree of polyp growth the doctors estimated they started forming in his late teens.
BUT LORI I HEAR THE PREPARATION IS NO FUN.
You’re...not wrong. But it’s really just annoying.
Naturally, to scope your colon, it has to be free of...the substance that usually fills it. So you have to do bowel prep for this. Bowel prep is something you have to do for a variety of procedures but they’re pretty severe about it for this because if your colon isn’t clear they literally can’t see anything, so.
It involves at least 24 hours of no solid food (broth and jello (except red jello) is allowed) and having to drink a prep solution. There are various kinds of these the time frame required is different. My prep was a 4 liter (yes, four LITERS) of a polyethylene glycol salt solution. It’s basically (puts chemistry hat on) a deliquescent solution that pulls water from your body into your intestines which is like turning on a firehose in there. Osmosis FTW. Liquidation sale, everything must go. Don’t go more than twenty feet from a toilet. Lay in some baby wipes. You also have to hydrate like a maniac because you’re shedding water much more than usual and you’ll shrivel up like a mummy if you don’t aggressively hydrate. The solution tastes...not great. I mix Crystal Light into it and it’s better. Mixing in a can of LaCroix was also helpful.
Not all preps are like this. Every clinic has their preferred method. I don’t ask questions. I do what I’m told. Then it’s nothing by mouth at all for 2 hours pre-procedure.
Honestly? The weirdest part is afterwards when you can eat again, and your whole guts have to kind of...fill back up. SO MUCH rumbling and noisemaking and squeaking.
The fun part? My clinic gave me a prinout of various photos of the inside of my colon, all squeaky clean like it hardly ever is. I might frame them.
The take home lesson here is that a colonscopy is super important, can save your life, isn’t uncomfortable at all, and you get to look at the inside of your guts. Win all around.
