A Tale of Two Colonoscopies: Life Isn’t Fair

Don’t read this if you can’t handle the truth

It’s not the procedure, it’s the prep.

Dave Barry captures it well in this piece for the Miami Herald:

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don’t want to be too graphic, here, but: Have you ever seen a space shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

Ask anyone who has had a colonoscopy. Wait, I take that back. Don’t ask anyone. Most colonoscopy veterans fall into one of two camps:

• The prep drink tastes awful. Fasting is no fun. The procedure is no big deal. This is important to potentially save your life so just do it.
• Forget how awful the drink tastes. You will be unable to leave the toilet for 16 hours. There will be poop the likes of which you have never experienced before. Nothing I tell you can adequately prepare you for the volume of poop, its frequency, and frustrating unpredictability. The experience is sheer misery. Do it anyway. Colonoscopies save lives.

David Barry and I fall into the second category.

Nobody enjoys the prep drink. Clear liquids and fasting also aren’t a treat for any but those who appreciate self-flagellation. The point of prep is to clear you out completely so when the camera gets shoved up where the sun don’t shine it can take nice pretty pictures for the doc.

While the thought of that procedure is unsettling for most of us, you are going to sleep right through it and there is no pain afterward so it honestly is no big deal. The unfairness of life comes shining through in the pre-op clearing out process.

Every body is different. For the lucky ones, you’ll force down the horrible tasting cocktail from hell, subsequently take a few strolls to the toilet to relieve yourself, fall asleep to the growling of an empty tummy, and wake in the morning well rested and ready to get this over with.

If you are unlucky your first sips of the vile concoction will be followed by hours and hours of cramping, running to the toilet, cleaning up the results of not running fast enough, parking yourself on the toilet to avoid a repeat of that last experience, rinse and repeat.

Life isn’t fair.

My husband and I had our first colonoscopies a week apart. I was first up to bat. I’m the kind of person who obsessively read birth stories good and bad while I was pregnant with my first. I wanted to be prepared with the full realm of possibilities I might face.

My favorite was the one from the grad student who felt slight cramping just after her husband left the apartment for a Starbucks run. She went into the bathroom, gave a little push, and out squirted a healthy baby girl. She carried the newborn to the kitchen, clamped off the umbilical cord with a chip clip, cut it, passed the afterbirth, and was sitting on the sofa nursing the newborn all before her husband returned with her caramel macchiato.

Spoiler alert: this is not the type of birth experience I had. I did come close to delivering my middle child in the car on the DC Beltway, but that is a story for another day. The point is of course I scoured the internet for colonoscopy stories before the big day. I wanted to know what I was potentially in for.

Unlike birth stories which simultaneously soothed and spiked my anxiety during pregnancy but were completely discarded once the first real contraction hit, true tales of colonoscopy prep were my companion and comfort throughout the experience. I had plenty of time to read while on the toilet.

Common writing advice suggests you write with a specific reader in mind, perhaps a younger version of yourself. I’m writing this story for 2am colonoscopy day me, dismally perched on the toilet and desperate for confirmation other people had been just as miserable as I was and lived to tell the tale.

In other words, I write as a public service to those of us who suffer during the evacuation of the bowels experience.

You’re welcome.

I aced the five days of low-fiber eating. Only clear liquids the day before was a piece of cake. Downing the first 32 oz. of Gatorade laced with polyethylene glycol wasn’t enjoyable but not nearly as bad as I expected. Netflix was playing, the path to the bathroom was short and cleared of obstacles. The bathroom was well stocked with reading materials and toilet paper. I was prepared.

The first cramp hit just as I finished the hour-long process of consuming my drink.

“Pause the movie!” I shouted at my husband as I dashed to the loo. Five minutes later I rejoined him on the sofa and pressed play. Ten minutes later I was back at the toilet. Thirty minutes later after numerous pause and play cycles and a few close calls where I nearly didn’t cover the ten feet between sofa and toilet in time, I gave up on the movie and began making a dent in the bathroom reading supply.

The rest of the evening continued in the same pattern. Long stretches of time on the toilet, tentative forays to the sofa for a change of pace, mild cramping through it all. At one in the morning, I tried sleeping. I’d fitfully try to sleep, seriously worried about soiling the bed. Most of the night was spent in the bathroom.

At five am I had to get up to drink the second 32 oz. of beverage. I was now seriously worried about making the half-hour drive to the hospital for the procedure. How could I possibly be away from a toilet for 30 minutes?

I packed a few changes of clothes, put towels on the seat and we headed off my husband trying to be sympathetic and drive fast, me clenching my bowels and praying.

We made it but it was close. While waiting to get called back I had to go to the restroom three times. My biggest fear at this point was no longer that I would soil myself in public but these constant runs would mean they wouldn’t do the procedure and I would have to go through this again some day soon.

Thankfully a still leaky patient didn’t faze the nurses or doctors at all. I was in and out quickly and back home enjoying a little breakfast and well-deserved nap in no time.

One week later it was my spouse's turn. I was full of useful advice and sympathy. As he sipped his potent brew I nodded knowingly. “We can start a movie but you probably won’t be able to finish it.” Sure enough one hour in he was off to the toilet.

He returned a few minutes later and restarted the movie. I kept my finger poised over the pause button but he sat there contentedly through the entire movie.

What the hell?

He took a quick trip to the toilet. We started a second movie. At the end of the second movie he headed to bed and slept soundly the entire night. His trip to the hospital in the morning was entirely without drama.

I would like to say that as a loving wife I was completely pleased his experience was so much smoother and less painful and uncomfortable than mine. I am glad, of course, but it isn’t fair. Four decades of menstrual cramps, three pregnancies and childbirth experiences, and a rougher colonoscopy prep experience? Really God? Must I pay for Eve’s sin forever?

My dad died of colon cancer. I’m profoundly grateful that colonoscopies exist. I will get one as often as the doctors recommend and suggest you do likewise. May your experience be closer to my spouse’s than to mine, but if not know that you will make it through and it will all soon be over.

Good luck!

You can read all of my humor here. Join Medium to read not just my stories but all the other fantastic content lurking around every corner. Use this link and I’ll get a small commission when you sign up.