Painful colonoscopy

You can get a virtual colonoscopy which is a ct scan it's less invasive and I found it painless. The prep is also so much easier you take a contrast prep.

It's a small straw sized tube inserted and you get air pumped in which is done slowly so no real sudden cramps . But ... if anything does show polyps etc you need to go through colonoscopy.

I’d take this in stages. The blood pressure thing was probably a one-off and they monitor you very carefully and the equipment is much better nowadays. Second, the piles. If you have bad trouble with piles that can be responsible for unpleasant feelings in the bowel. Try to correct any straining with something like Fybogel and don’t sit on the loo too long. There are various ways they can deal with piles short of surgery. So that can be sorted. If you have to have your bowel looked at, I can’t see why you are leaping to the conclusion that the answer will be bowel cancer? There are lots of bowel conditions (some very functional like those concerning the diverticula and Irritable Bowel Syndrome; some more troublesome like Crohns Disease and Colitis for which they can give some help and many more)  before arriving at cancer which is often symptomless. Bowel cancer is often perfectly treatable - first, it may be just be a pre-cancerous polyp and even it is an actual tumour it can often be successfully treated and completely removed. But on generalised bowel symptoms it is much more likely NOT to be bowel cancer. The last question is how precise you want the test to be. The gold standard test is colonoscopy which most (not all) people have without much difficulty. You’ve had one before and you weren’t in any pain that you report. Just this low blood pressure issue. I would mention it to them, of course, but that doesn’t seem a reason not to have it. It affects my BP (and many others) the other way but it is not a long test. Also it’s very unlikely to happen a second time. There are other options like virtual colonoscopies (although it has some admission to the rectum of equipment) or MRI scans. They are not as good as colonoscopy but they do quite a good job. They might even start you with a fecal blood test which just requires you to give the hospital some poo. The big disadvantage of all other methods is that they can’t do anything about what they see if they need to whereas with a colonoscopy in the case of some growths etc (whether cancerous or not) they can take them out painlessly there and then. So you run the risk you may be recommended to have the colonoscopy anyway, even if they gave you another less-invasive test. I also suspect that you may torture yourself wondering if they missed something. I think I would go for the colonoscopy but mention the previous issue with blood pressure. Anyway, very best of luck. David.