I’ve seen a lot of colonoscopy horror stories written, so I thought I’d share my more positive experience. Had first colonoscopy this week.
I found the prep was ok, it didn’t taste great obviously, but nowhere near as bad as I imagined. I drank it all without problems, a glass at a time, I just didn’t think about it too much and chugged it down.
I was expecting severe diarrhoea in to the small hours, but ended up going about 4 times over an hour and a half, then I was in bed by 10. Didn’t need to get up overnight and didn’t need to be glued to the toilet for hours. Slept through until 5am alarm, when I had to have the rest of the prep. I had 2 episodes of watery diarrhoea about an hour later, but the second wasn’t much.
I did stick strictly to the low fibre diet, didn’t eat much, and drank plenty of fluids on the day of the prep. I think that probably helped.
Procedure wise, I don’t remember a thing. I had sedation, remember rolling on to my left side, then woke up in recovery. No pain after procedure either.
Maybe I had a particularly good experience when you compare to lots on here, but thought it was worth sharing.
Glad it went so well for you. Can you please also post what prep you had, and what country you are in as both make a great deal of difference. You are right - many people do not have a good experience, so of course they are the people who tend to post, not people like you who do not have any problems.
It’s always worth sharing positive experience to encourage others. Most people only share their bad experiences and it can give a distorted view. I’ve had both good and bad experiences with endoscopies so I know how they can differ, sometimes, depending on where you had them done.
Good on you for sharing this. It will help others who are apprehensive. I've had two and both were no trouble. Mild sedation but remember everything and watched it on the screen. I was also very chatty and they were probably glad when it was over! Celebrated with a large carrot cake.
Hi, I’m in Australia. The prep was 250ml picolax at 6pm, then 3 x 250ml glasses water every 15 mins.
Followed by 1 litre ‘colon lytely’ at 8pm, taken as 4 x 250ml glasses every 10-15 mins. I took every 10.
I drank extra water and Gatorade too so the diarrhoea was very quickly just water.
At 5 am I repeated the picolax and 3x250ml glasses water.