Adventures in Lower GI Endoscopy

Following the detailed instructions provided to me by the GI services unit of my local hospital, my journey begins at 4 p.m. the night before the colonoscopy.  I take two Dulcolax tablets, or stool softeners, to loosen my bowels up to the whole idea of what was about to transpire over the next 18 hours.

Things already started moving before 6 o’clock, which is when the real fun begins.  As the instructions say, I am to consume a full bottle of powdered MiraLax (238 grams) with 64 ounces of a clear fluid of my choice – all within a two-hour period.  The instructions suggest mixing two capfuls (which is already DOUBLE the recommend dose on the packaging) with 12 ounces of fluid, and drinking THAT every 15-30 minutes until the entire bottle is gone.  By 8 p.m. you’re supposed to be ready for two more stool softener tablets – just in case the 238 grams and 64 ounces of bowel dynamite hasn’t cleared everything out yet.

I don’t think I left the toilet between 7 o’clock and 3:30 a.m.  Around 10 p.m. I was thinking how nice it would be to have a television set in the bathroom.  I was also longing for one of those travel pillows that you have on airplanes to keep your neck from craning over as you dose off and sleep upright.  The thought of a pillow and blanket, and even a reclining toilet entered my mind throughout the night.

If that wasn’t torture enough, the instructions require a 5:30 a.m. wake-up call (as if you could sleep any way) to drink a full 10-ounce bottle of magnesium citrate.  There’s no point in trying to leave the toilet while drinking it, so I didn’t.  My bottle of magnesium citrate was lemon flavored—I thought the lemony scent would be a nice touch for the physician who was going to be looking up my rectum with a lamp and camera.

However, at this point I was really annoyed with whoever wrote these guidelines as much the process itself.  This was overkill: two stool softeners, 238 grams of Miralax, two MORE stool softeners, and THEN a 10-ounce bottle liquid ass!  The guidelines warned that if you were still having “formed stools” after all of this, you needed to call the hospital for further instructions.  Really?  I think this procedure would have cleared out Orson Welles if he had just ingested a whole cow while it was alive.  I assumed these instructions were ‘one size fits all’ and the authors had the largest size carnivore in mind, not 5-10, 170 lb vegetarians.

However, I measured my waist after this whole adventure and I literally went from a 39½ inches to 38.  That’s right, I took a whole inch and a half off my waste; so if your doctor ever suggests that you have a lower GI endoscopy – DO IT!  -- IT’S TOTALLY WORTHY IT!

What does this have to with the Steelers . . . absolutely nothing, except that my Steeler tumbler help deliver the goods.  I feel completely purged from last week's disaster in Baltimore . . . here we go Steelers, here we go!