(no subject)

[the_rck]

Bah. These colonoscopy instructions are not as clear as I’d like. It’s more in an annoying way than anything, but…

First, they tell me to drink the clean out solution in eight ounce doses until I’ve had two liters worth. Would it have killed them to stick to one unit of measure? It’s not hard to figure out what they mean, but really? English or metric, please.

Second, they specify a one hour window for me to do something that they specify should take two hours to complete. I’m pretty sure that the one hour window is meant as a window for when to start the two hours, but they don’t actually say that.

They say not to drink anything red, orange, or purple, but they don’t say when to start that. A week before? Three days before? I guess I’ll go with a week just to be safe.

I’m going to have to get up at 3:30 a.m. that morning in order to complete all the medications and such at the intervals that are necessary. If I didn’t have to deal with the thyroid medication, I could sleep another hour, but I can’t get back to sleep in between taking that and needing to get up an hour later.

And the GoLYTELY/NuLYTELY website is absolutely unwilling to tell me what’s in the flavor packets. I need that information to know whether or not I can use them. If I can, I want to, but… Listing a bunch of ingredients that are in the actual solution and then ending with 'flavor ingredients' is decidedly not useful. I’m also worried that I won’t be able to drink the stuff because I can’t drink anything thicker than water unless it’s at least partly frozen. That is, I can drink a milkshake or a smoothie with lots of ice in it, but I can’t drink, say, mineral oil or a liquid antacid or kefir. I can sometimes manage something the texture of mashed potatoes or applesauce or yogurt and sometimes absolutely not.

I suppose I should call the nurse and ask about all of that soonish. My colonoscopy is scheduled for a Monday in March, and it would be bad to discover on Sunday morning that I can’t do the prep because there won’t be anyone I can reach to get help right then.

Comments

[heavenscalyx]

The instructions I got were fairly precise, though I failed to read them more than 48 hours ahead of time. Heh. The red/purple ban was, like, a 3-day ban, apparently, but it wasn't in my regular instructions, just in the box of prep stuff, so I didn't know about it until the day OF, and all I'd been drinking was cranberry and grape juice. (Couldn't have the white versions because I think they had corn syrup in.)

I would vote for not using the flavor packets, period. I got the SUPREP with a "cherry" flavor and if it hadn't had the flavoring, it would've probably been tolerable. (Cherry flavoring is the one thing guaranteed to make my stomach rebel.) The solution I had was well-diluted with water -- the solution was less than half of an 8 ounce glass, and one had to top up with water, so it wasn't viscous at all.

Of course, I have no idea if SUPREP is at all like GOLYTELY (and my cousin, who has had more colonoscopies than any single human should have to, was doing the Miralax + Gatorade version, so his experience is unhelpful too).

Best of luck. One thing that surprised me was how ill I felt like I must be during the prep; I kept acting like I had a norovirus, washing my hands obsessively and trying not to touch things.

[the_rck]

They specifically made an appointment for me to talk to a nurse who went over the instructions with me in detail. Fortunately, she was able to fit me in less than half an hour after I finished with the doctor who wants the colonoscopy, so I didn't have to make a second trip in.

I'm a little put off by the online reviews I'm finding of GoLYTELY. I know that people for whom it worked badly are more likely to review, but... One site gave it 1.8 out of 5 stars. Another gave it just short of 3 stars out of 5, and the reviews there were about evenly split between 1 star and 5 star reviews.

[kyrielle]

The flavor packet with mine was lemon and...I think it helped. That stuff is nasty any way you slice it, but it's not thick.

One thing they didn't warn me about that would've been useful to think through...you need to chill the stuff to render it palatable (at least the stuff I was given), and by the end of drinking two liters of that, you are *shivering* because you've shoved so much cold liquid into yourself.

I had a space heater handy, luckily - I set it up in the bathroom and turned it on and huddled in front of it much of the time. But, some way to warm yourself back up (preferably that you can use while dealing with the intended, but unpleasant, effects of the solution) is handy.

[the_rck]

They did tell me that I ought to chill it. They didn't mention it leaving me chilled, but I can see how that would follow.

We have two bathrooms, but one is in the basement. I need to negotiate with Scott and Cordelia to figure out which one I'm going to use and which one they're going to use. I think we'll have to set up a heater in the basement bathroom if I'm going to be down there for hours at a time, but that would be for trying to get things to an ordinary semi-warm temperature.

I made the mistake of looking at people's reviews of GoLYTELY while I was trying to find the ingredients of the flavor packets (which I did eventually manage. None of them use aspartame or sucralose, so I should be safe enough as far as sweeteners go). There were a lot of horror stories. Some of them were from people doing foolish things like drinking all of that and then taking a nap and being surprised at the results, but some of the stories were scary.