Monday, March 20, 2006

Why I'm up so early

One of the great perks of being retired is the ability to sleep as late as I want most of the time. And since I'm usually up until 2:00 or 3:00am, or even later, I frequently don't roll out of bed until about 10:00. But today was different.

I got up early so I could eat my breakfast early. Tomorrow afternoon I'm having a colonoscopy, and this was my last opportunity to have solid food before the procedure. For the rest of the day it's just liquids, jello and such. Rule: they can't be red or purple (try finding non-red diet jello--the only kind my supermarket had was lemon). Then this evening I have to drink a gallon of this yucky stuff, Golytely, which will clean out my gastro-intestinal track. What fun. I have lots of reading material ready by the toilet.

(They used to have a different, less-yucky way of cleaning things out, using a laxative, which is what I used for my previous colonoscopy. But apparently some patients had bad side effects, so they went back to this way.)

At least I think I'm having a colonoscopy tomorrow. The problem is, I've come down with a cold. I don't know how that affects things. I'm going to call the doctor's office in a few minutes to see what they have to say. Stay tuned for further developments.

UPDATE: I just got off the phone with the physician's assistant. She said as long as I'm not running a fever they can do the procedure. And she said it may actually help me in one regard--with a cold I might not be able to taste the Golytely.

3 comments:

midwesterntransport said...

Oh, my mom had to drink that stuff when she had her colonoscopy. And they put her under with something called, I think, "Twilight": she could respond to directions, but it affected her short-term memory so that she wouldn't remember the procedure.

I hope it goes well for you tomorrow.

caprice said...

Thanks, dirty girl. The other time I had one they gave me something knocked me out completely--I think. They gave it to me, the doctor asked me how I was feeling, I said I was getting a little sleepy, and the next thing I knew I was in the recovery room. In between was a total blank.

caprice said...

Thanks, ms. truffle. I'm surprised they do that for SRS, but I'm no expert in the subject.

Anyhow, I managed to keep my flow unidirectional, though a couple times it was close. Now it's three hours after I finished, and I'm still flowing--and thinking about what I'm going to eat after it's over. Only about 14 hours.