Colonoscopy :/

So I had a colonoscopy today. Be prepared for TMI (too much information). You’ve been warned.

For about 5 years, I have had occasional bleeding after a bowel movement. The first time I noticed it was during my pregnancy with Adrianna. It has never been much and it didn’t happen often, so I have been putting off the appointment to see the doctor. Because really, who wants to go to the doctor to have them investigate that area? Embarrassing. Plus, since I was pregnant when the symptoms first developed, I just assumed it was hemorrhoids as those are common with pregnancy. I didn’t have any other symptoms or pain and it wasn’t happening often, so I was able to ignore the little nagging doubt in the back of my mind, for the most part.

Five years later, the little nagging doubt started to get bigger. Especially after one episode where the blood was not just the normal pink but was bright red and there was more of it. Although that hasn’t happened since, I decided I should go get checked out. Even if the results just turned out to be hemorrhoids, I needed to know for sure that it wasn’t anything else.

So, I made myself an appointment with a gastroenterologist a couple of weeks ago. After hearing my symptoms, the doctor scheduled a colonoscopy. She said that I most likely was correct in assuming that it was hemorrhoids, but anytime there is bleeding they recommend checking things out to make sure there isn’t anything else going on.

I think most people who have gone through a colonoscopy would agree that the actual prep you go through before the procedure is the worst part. I had to be on a clear liquid diet all day Wednesday, so basically water, Gatorade and clear jello. No red, purple or orange liquids or jello. Not very satisfying at all. At 3:00 p.m. I had to take four laxative pills and then at 5:00 p.m. I had to mix half a bottle of Miralax (another laxative) with 32 ounces of Gatorade and drink 8 ounces every 15 minutes until it was gone.

Greg watched the girls and I hung out in our room and bathroom. Since I brought my laptop in with me, I guess it would now be “flagged”. Ha. The Miralax / Gatorade mixture made me feel nauseous on top of the laxative effect. And I had a headache from not eating all day.

The next morning, I had to wake at 6:00 a.m. to do the other half a bottle of Miralax with another 32 ounces of Gatorade. Since it made me feel nauseous the evening before, my body was rebelling at the idea. Just the mere thought of drinking the Gatorade again made me sick. It was a rough hour as I guzzled it down, followed by another couple hours of nausea and headache. I was unable to have any more liquids after 8:00 a.m.

A friend of ours offered to watch the girls for us, so we dropped them off at 11:45 and headed off to my appointment. I was brought back to a waiting area where a nurse prepped me for the procedure and covered me up with a nice warm, heated blanket. This included starting an IV. You may remember that my veins do not play nice when it comes to IVs. And it doesn’t help that I was dehydrated due to the liquid restrictions that I was under.

I told the nurse that I really did not want an IV in my wrist because they never worked there, so she nicely tried to find a vein elsewhere. I forgot to mention that they also don’t work in the back of my hand. After a bit of painful digging around there, she asked the anesthesiologist to try. He really didn’t want to put it in the crook of my elbow since I would be laying on my side, even though that is usually the best place on me. So I nicely insisted that they get me some Lidocain before trying on my other hand.

The nurse went off in search of some Lidocain. She didn’t have any luck at first but the anesthesiologist told her to try another place because he was pretty sure he was going to have to do some digging around. WHAT?!!!! Then, probably in response to the deer-in-the-headlights look I must have flashed him, he quietly told me that he was just motivating her to look harder. Well, I don’t know which one of us he was lying to, but it worked as the nurse did end up finding a Lidocain shot for me. The anesthesiologist did end up having to dig around, but it didn’t matter since the Lidocain instantly did its job. *insert sigh of relief*

I was taken into the procedure room where I was hooked up to some monitors and another friendly nurse got me ready. At one point I did get a little nervous when another anesthesiologist came in, pulled off his hoodie (he had his scrubs on underneath) and turned on a radio with some rock music playing. Now I like rock music, but the whole thing weirded me out a little. It felt like an episode of Scrubs where Turk and his friends are rocking out and cracking jokes as they operated on someone. Hmmm…

They started the anesthesia and man that stuff works fast. Just seconds after it started into my IV my eyes lost focus and the next thing I remember I was done!

I don’t remember walking back to the chair or Greg getting there. I do remember shivering so they covered me with another one of those nice heated blankets and Greg also draped his coat over me.

So the verdict (so far): I do have some small hemorrhoids but I also did end up having a small polyp, which they removed. (The nurse showed it to Greg, even though he very much did not want to see it.) I also have some pictures of my colon if anyone is interested. Um, yeah…no. I won’t be posting those on my blog. Gross.

The only side effects have been lots of gas, as they had to pump air into my colon so they could see everything, and some bleeding, since they had to remove the polyp. They will be sending the polyp off to get a biopsy to find out if it is cancerous or not. Either way, it was good to find and remove it now while it was small, since the larger a polyp grows, the more likely it is to become cancerous.

We will have the results of the biopsy in 5-7 days.