My experice of bowel prep and colonoscopy

I too like many others when I found out that I had to have a colonoscopy, did as much reading as possible which lead to me finding this website. Hearing the different experiences and advises was very helpful. I have been having stomach cramping now for around three months, with varying degrees of severity, ranging from mild pain to writhing on the floor in absolute agony, and I can assure you that I have a high pain threshold. My colonoscopy was booked for 9am on Saturday morning, so I had a light lunch as instructed at Friday midday and prepared the MOVIPREP at 2pm. Due to my my weight loss and reduction in my normal food intake I figured that I wouldn't necessarily be affected as much as I had read from other peoples experiences from taking the bowel preparation. Oh how wrong I was!!!. The drink has to be taken twice , roughly 4 hours between each preparation. Each preparation must be mixed with 1 litre of water. The orange taste is manageable however by the time I was consuming the second preparation it was positively sickly. After an hour of drinking prep1 I started to feel bowel movements, the rest is history, between 3pm and the time I finally managed to retire to bed I had been to the toilet around 23 times. By the 7th time having looked at what had come out I thought to myself, surely their cant be anything left in my stomach, I was proved wrong a further 16 times!!! By the 19th visit to the toilet your literally just gushing out water. The following morning I went to the toilet a further 3 times and then made my way to the hospital. When i was in the room where the colonoscopy was to be performed the nurses inserted a catheter into my right wrist the doctor came around and then fed the sedative through it. I can in all honestly say that the only pain i experienced through the whole procedure was when i could feel the device in the left side of my stomach. I felt a sharp pain and i that was what in fact awoke me from my drowsiness as I felt a sharp tugging inside me, so much so that i had to hold onto the rail of the trolley and grit my teeth. I later found at that this was the point at which the doctor was taking a sample of the tumor that was found in my colon. I now await the lab results of this sample. The procedure itself really is nothing to lose sleep over. If it was not for the tumour sample being taken id probably not even had felt a single thing. Oh to add you do notice when they put something at the base of your anus and it starts blowing air into you, but its not painful, just a strange feeling.

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