REALLY Bad Experience of Colonoscopy

Just had the triple whammy! Gastroscopy, Colonoscopy and Capsule Endoscopy (the travelling camera) which has just this minute completed its NASA mission in my digestive tract and splashed down in my bathroom! Incredible technology. I have had several gastroscopies and colonoscopies before. Thus time I had all three tests due to unexplained anaemia (very gradual haemoglobin decline then a sudden iron loss in April but with no visible signs of blood loss from stomach or gut). I went to a consultant I met once in 2010 when I needed an emergency gastroscopy when I was in hospital for an unrelated condition and reacted badly to aspirin. He is youngish and very calm and gives you his full statistics including number of procedures he has performed and his percentages where anything happened like a bleed. He had done 800 capsule endoscopies before. The day before, I took a dummy capsule which can be detected in the body by a scan and which is slightly larger than the Pill Cam but which dissolves after 30 hours if in contact with the digestive juices. This is to see that there is nothing preventing the real capsule (which does not dissolve) from going through. He gave me Senna and MoviPrep (he prescribed the orange one which he thinks is less sickly than the lemon and I agree) and although not my favourite tipple, I got through it. I was an afternoon test and the usual fun started although I found (oddly) that the Senna, which jump started the process,  actually made the MoviPrep less violent. I had a Senna combination once before and the same thing happened. You would think it would make it worse. The second dose of that lovely drink actually produced much less than in previous times. It was clear and stopped about an hour before I needed to set out for the hospital. The Dummy capsule passed about four hours before I went. I hardly noticed it except nothing else was solid at that time so I guessed. If it doesn't pass they give you a scan when you go in for the procedure and it's fine as long as it is in the colon. If it is stuck in the small intestine it dissolves later but you may not be suitable for the real thing. On arrival at the hospital, I was calm inside but I also had a BP of 181/81 which shows there is an inner stress we cannot completely control. My previous gastroscopy had been in 2012 and showed some wear and tear in the lower part of the stomach and duodenitis. My previous colonoscopy was routine in 2015 and was entirely negative as all my previous ones had been. He sedated me effectively for the gastroscopy which I don't really remember and brought me almost out of sedation (though relaxed) for the colonoscopy because he wanted me to roll over several times from side to side and on my back. He is particularly interested academically in how to make the procedure less uncomfortable and the pressure at the turn seemed much less. He used water inside the gut and explained to me everything he was doing. He discovered one small polyp at the sigmoid end and snared it - that was fascinating and painless as the gut itself doesn't feel pain (despite all the torture it can give us when distended) and then introduced Buscopan (the anti IBS stuff) near the end of the procedure. That made a huge difference afterwards. I wasn't bloated or gassy and my gut has been very calm and well behaved since. Results from the camera will be in a week or so, but he thinks he has found the cause of the anaemia in the gastroscopy which is worsening wear and tear in the last part of the stomach and which has a tendency to bleed very gently, thus it is occult and invisible to the naked eye but over time will cause blood loss. He didn't seem too concerned and says that I can either have some iron from time to time or he can laser it with an endoscopy under general anaesthetic. He also found mild diverticulosis in the gut but he thinks that is more age-related than anything and will treat that with gradual fibre increase. So, sorry this was a full one, but I thought it might be interesting. I have a colonoscopist friend who says you need to go to those skilled and specialist at it and that not everyone is as good as each other. He also says that although some people will feel pain because of structural issues or the condition they have, most good colonoscopists do care about making the procedure as comfortable as possible. He added also that there is nothing comfortable about bowel cancer or bowel surgery which these tests can prevent.