Well, here is an un-sedated colonoscopy experience significantly different than any other I have read anywhere on-line.
Let me just say three things up front: First, while I don’t consider myself a control freak (that would be my boss) when it comes to my body & health I have the final say on everything. Period.
Secondly, I would consider myself to have a relatively high tolerance for pain – although after witnessing my wife go through 2 natural child births and 1 C-section delivering our 3 daughters, I think she may have me beat. Ouch.
Thirdly, I don’t like needles. Don’t know anyone that does, but my wife doesn’t seem to mind them. I don’t have any tattoos (never saw one I liked on anyone else either). For the record I do take an Enbrel Pen once a week for a skin condition and that doesn’t bother me. While considered an injection, it is not actually a syringe or IV needle. Those bother me.
Ok, so my wife and I turned 56 this past year. My wife gets a new doctor as her previous doctor left our health-care plan and her new doctor talks her into a colonoscopy. So she goes ahead and books her colonoscopy for January 30th 2015.
As usual she does no homework prior to the procedure and agrees to full anesthesia VIA Propofol. I drop her off at 9:00 am as I am her driver. I am called in at just after noon time to collect her and I can tell she is still trying to shake out the cob-webs. She is happy and talkative and says she can’t tell if it’s because she’s just so happy because the procedure is over or due to the Propofol effects. I bring her home and she naps the rest of the afternoon. Her only real complaint except for being cold on the gurney was the severe burn of the injection at the injection site. For her to complain that had to be painful. Afterwards I read about this very common complaint with Propofol on-line as well and how different anesthetist’s are hitting patients with Lidocaine, etc… to help alleviate this issue. Yup, using one drug so injecting you with a different drug won’t hurt so much…OMG. I digress…
So you know what that means, unfortunately for me, since she did “hers” now it is my turn. However, as I previously mentioned being a little controlling when it comes to what people want to do (intrusively) to my body, I do a little homework.
So I go online and am reading all kinds of stories about good experiences and bad experiences regarding colonoscopies. I read about so called “Twilight Sleep”, partial anesthesia, full anesthesia, and I stumble across (very few) non-anesthesia colonoscopy stories. However, I do come across a You-Tube video from someone mentioning un-sedated colonoscopy as a viable option to anesthesia colonoscopies. I find it very interesting that an actual health care professional is recommending this as a viable option. So I start doing more digging and discover that in Europe, non-anesthesia colonoscopies are the norm. I find out that on the East coast of the US, full anesthesia is used 3-1 more often than any other region in the US. The explanations seem to be that healthcare coverage overall is better in this region? This doesn’t make sense to me and I would love to know the real reason so if anyone knows please respond to this blog). I dig more and discover that “most” health care professionals have “their” colonoscopies without sedation. I am intrigued.
So I call my local health care clinic (where my wife just had her colonoscopy less than a month earlier) asking about colonoscopy choices there and they don’t even mention non-anesthesia as an option. Until I ask.
Once I question them as to if this is indeed an option they say “yes but you must have an IV in the event you need drugs to be administered due to pain” – which is fine with me. But I can tell by the tone and other comments (everybody wants drugs) that they don’t recommend it.
But again, they never mentioned this until I asked about it. Hummm…
So at this point I am suspect of this (Major NH based Health Care System) clinic and call my doctor and cut a deal where I would (finally) agree to a colonoscopy only if he would refer me to a clinic in Burlington MA (about 50 miles from where I live). He agrees and does so.
So once referred, I call and speak to a receptionist in the Clinic and she mentions that non-anesthesia is indeed an option there. So I ask her if she were to have one without anesthesia, – and she answers been-there-done-that and highly recommendeds. I said ok “book me”.
So I drink the (Miralax) prep and it really is not that bad. I drink it straight over ice. Close to a gallon of it in 15 minute increments until it’s gone. At least 90% of the comments I have read on-line mention “that” as being the worst part. Frankly I have had worse diarrhea from my homemade 5-alarm chili! Seriously.
Easily the worst part for me was the shear lack of privacy in the enormous endoscopy triage area at this particular clinic – which was setup remarkably similar to that where my wife had hers.
It begins when I am escorted from a very large waiting area into the endoscopy unit, dropped off in the middle of a very busy “open” area, partitioned by only a bunch of oversized shower curtains. This “endoscopy hostess” then pulls an oversized shower curtain 360 around us and instructs that I undress, hands me a jonnie to put on and says after I am in the jonnie to wait for the nurse and get comfortable on the gurney. She then partially closes the curtain upon leaving. Honest to God. This shower or privacy curtain comes down about knee high and again this is a very bustling area so I know there are a bunch of folks that can see me drop trousers, etc… Then, while lying on the gurney, I am hearing folks on the left of me and to the right of me being asked personal questions about medical history, allergies, medications they are taking and other personal questions. Really? Do I need to hear the guy about 5 feet to my right mention that he is on erectile disjunction medication? So sure enough, minutes later my nurse comes in and starts asking me pretty much the same questions… at one point I ask that she please try to keep her voice down a little bit. I am trying to answer in my lowest audible voice possible but with the noise level reverberating in the large room it’s pretty difficult. Now (my wife will attest) I am not what I would consider to be a modest person (I sunbath nude in the privacy of my backyard regularly all summer, shower at the gym with other guys present a couple times a week, walk around the house in my birthday suit on weekends, etc…) but I am embarrassed and shocked by the lack of privacy during this rather personal Q&A interrogation process. They couldn’t bring you into a private room to ask you all this? OMG. It kind of reminded me of what I saw on TV of the 1970’s 4077 MASH unit! Ok, enough about this – but to me this was much, much worse than the mild discomfort and inconvenience of diarrhea-day.
Once the questions from the nurse are complete the doctor arrives and does ask me to sign a consent form and doesn’t seem to have any problem with me being non-sedated. He even approves me not receiving an IV for “emergency medication”. Am I happy! I am then wheeled into the private room (thank God) and the process begins – without sedation.
To be honest, there was one segment where there was a turn/bend (the doctor warned me that there would be this part) in the colon that there was some minor discomfort, but the nurse observing the monitors just asked that I take a few deep breaths and the discomfort passed quickly and within 20-25 minutes it was all over – and he stopped to remove 2 small polyps. I watched the whole thing on the monitor with the Doc. It was pretty cool actually. On a 1-10 pain scale, OVERALL it was about a 2-3 at worst. Honestly.
They then wheeled me out of the room back into the same shower curtain semi-private area I started at. The nurse asked if I had passed gas, to which I answered yes (lied) got dressed and as I was leaving the doctor gave me a printout of the procedure results and as I was leaving couldn’t help but peak into erectile disjunction guys only partially closed curtain-room to see him still sleeping off the drugs he was apparently given.
I was probably home 50 miles away before he got released.
To everyone reading this – YOU CAN DO IT TOO! Good luck.
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