but my gut is just starting to revolt the amount!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was prescribed the Golytely because it's easier on the bowel than the others. One mouthful was enough for me.
Poor Husker! You've probably had enough.
Yep
I just put on a sweater - shivers - low sugar and cold.
Husker- Think about it. By this time tomorow, it will have been all over for a long time, and you will be relaxing.
Can't you get something like apple juice? That will help with the sugar.
yep in the am is the start of my 4 day weekend - think on the bright side
Happy thoughts, husker..... :wink:
(((((HUSKER)))))
There is a real and virtual colonoscopy. Success is not 100%. Here is information outlining results.
Better Ways to Scan the Colon
By: Judy Foreman
02/12/02
"We Cater to Cowards," proclaims the cheery little sign at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, where countless cowards (including this one) go for what may well be everyone's least favorite test: colon cancer screening.
It's no secret why people stay away in droves from such things. To detect cancer, or the small growths called polyps that might someday turn cancerous, a doctor must pass a tube containing a tiny video camera up through the patient's rectum into the large intestine, or colon - not exactly most people's idea of a good time.
If the doctor looks at only the lower third of the colon, the procedure is called a flexible sigmoidoscopy, though this test is so limited that some doctors are abandoning it, arguing it's like doing a mammogram on only one breast. If the doctor inspects the whole colon up to the small intestine, that's a full colonoscopy - psychologically, a bit more daunting, perhaps, though the patient does get sedation, and the whole day off from work.
With either a colonoscopy or "flex sig," the bowel must be pumped full of air to keep the walls from closing together and obscuring the view. And with either test, the patient must "prep," that is, spend a few lovely hours cleaning out the colon, either by drinking a gallon of a nonabsorbable liquid such as Golytely, taking strong laxatives like Fleet phosphosoda that flush stool from the entire system, or (for flexible sigmoidoscopies) by using enemas such as Fleet.
At the moment, only 20 percent of people who should get regular colon cancer screening - in other words, everybody over age 50 - actually do so, even though such screening can save lives. But take heart, fellow cowards.
A number of new techniques now being tested, including a noninvasive test called "virtual colonoscopy," should make screening more appealing. And if these new tests can be refined to match the accuracy of current colonoscopy, the death rate from colorectal cancer, which has been declining for the last 20 years, could decline further.
Currently, colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society. Last year, more than 135,000 people were expected to be diagnosed with it, and nearly 57,000 to die.
Yet it is "one of the most preventable of cancers," says Dr. J. Randolph Hecht, a gastroenterologist and oncologist at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles. The average person - someone with no family history of the disease - has 1-in-20 lifetime chance of getting colon cancer. Early detection, by eliminating the polyps and early cancers, can reduce this risk even further.
"Some people say they'd rather die than have a colonoscopy," says Hecht. "But I have lots of people who are dying because they didn't have a colonoscopy."
That's a shame, because standard colonoscopy, which at $1000 or more is relatively expensive, is still the best way to find polyps and cancers in the colon. Medicare and many other insurers now pay for routine colonoscopy, though if all the millions of people who should get a colonoscopy did, the financial squeeze would be enormous.
The big advantage of colonoscopy is its accuracy. It has a "miss rate" of only 2 percent, says Dr. Douglas Pleskow, director of the colon cancer center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
And if the doctor finds a polyp, he or she can take it right away. If the patient does have polyps, the recommendation is for a repeat colonoscopy in three years. If no polyps are found, you don't need another for 10 years because polyps turn into cancer do so slowly.
"The procedure is not entirely risk free. There's the risk of perforation of the intestine, which leads to infection or bleeding in one of every 500 to 1000 procedures", says Dr. Seth Glick, clinical professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania.
With flexible sigmoidoscopy, a big advantage is that no sedation is required. But it's being phased out in many hospitals, including Beth Israel Deaconess and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, because it does not catch enough potential cancers. In a major study published in August in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that "flex sig," even when combined with a low-tech test called FOBT, failed to detect cancer and high risk polyps in 24 percent of patients.
(FOBT stands for fecal occult blood test. Doctors analyze a tiny stool specimen for traces of blood. The test is not very reliable, because many cancers or polyps bleed only intermittently and some things that bleed do not indicate cancer.)
Of the emerging alternatives, virtual colonoscopy is the furthest along. In fact, it's already used for patients who cannot tolerate colonoscopy - either because they have intestinal obstructions or because they refuse to have the invasive test.
In virtual colonoscopy, which insurers do not yet pay for, the patient still has to clean out the bowel beforehand, and the bowel must still be pumped full of air. But instead of having a video camera inserted through the rectum, the patient gets a CT scan - a series of X-rays - that are reconstructed by a computer into a two- or three-dimensional image.
The downside is that this involves considerable radiation - much more "than a mammogram because you expose the entire abdomen," says Dr. William Brugge, director of gastrointestinal endoscopy at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. And if the doctor discovers polyps, the patient has to go on to have a full colonoscopy anyway, so the doctor can take them out.
On the other hand, virtual colonoscopy carries no risk of perforation. Because the X-rays scan the whole lower abdomen, doctors can also pick up cancers in the liver, spleen, kidneys and stomach that might otherwise be missed. Moreover, virtual colonoscopy requires no sedation and it takes under one minute of the patient's time, though it can take an hour to analyze the results, says Dr. Judy Yee, chief of CT and gastrointestinal radiology at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center and a pioneer in the technique.
In a study of 300 patients published in Radiology in June, 2001, Yee's team found that virtual colonoscopy was great at picking up polyps that measure 10 millimeters or more, the ones that are most likely to turn into cancers. But because the quality of the CT images are not as good as in standard colonoscopy, the virtual technique didn't catch many smaller polyps. A 1999 study at the Boston University School of Medicine came to similar conclusions.
For that reason, among others, no one is - yet- recommending that virtual colonoscopy replace standard colonoscopy for routine screening.
But virtual colonoscopy could take off in the next year or two if scientists succeed at making it "prep-less," that is, if patients don't have to clean out the colon beforehand. One idea is to have patients swallow a substance such as barium that would act as a positive contrast agent to "tag" residual fluid and stool in the colon so that it shows up as a different color or density in the computerized image. Doctors could then "electronically subtract" this part of the image and, "see" any true polyps or cancers lying underneath.
Researchers are also pursuing a different kind of fecal tagging to help diagnose colon cancer. First, the patient supplies a whole stool specimen. (This involves a special "bucket" that fits onto the toilet seat; the patient defecates into the bucket.) The sample is then tested for human DNA mutations known to be involved in colon cancer.
In this non-invasive approach, reported in late January in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers at Johns Hopkins University, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, a team in Sweden, and the Lahey Clinic and Exact Sciences Corp. in Massachusetts, reported they were able to find fragments of human DNA in stool (which contains mostly bacterial DNA). They were then able to isolate the colon cancer-causing APC gene in about 60 percent of early-stage cancer patients tested. The test could become a noninvasive method of detecting colon cancer
It's a very painful procedure. That's what I know. ;( c.i.
Ok - C.I. you want me to make a joke on that??
kidding!
Heck, I almost slugged the doc for inducing so much pain like my bowels was gonna blow apart. c.i.
Honestly C.I., I get a different doctor! Seroius
Husker says "different doctor". May be a good point. It depends on who does it. When my good Dr. K. was away pursuing his career in the lucrative U S of A for a couple of years, another doctor in the clinic did the scope a couple of times. Bad experience. and the staff, who knew me well, warned me. Done right, it's not that bad, really.
c.i.- Get yourself another doctor. It should not be painful. At one point, my bowels went into spasm, and I was caught unawares. Once I realized what was happening, it was no big deal.
The suggested pharmaceutical procedure is to drink Mg citrate to clean out your large intestines and to maintain yourself on a very low fiber diet.
Also suggested is a dose of Ativan to calm the nerves prior to the procedures.
mckenzie wrote:I was prescribed the Golytely because it's easier on the bowel than the others. One mouthful was enough for me.
Poor Husker! You've probably had enough.
This isn't the suggested method any more. Use Mag Citrate.
I've had a flex sig and it wasn't bad at all (no anasthesia). Didn't want to watch it on the monitor, though.
Husker, thinking of you, hon.
New Haven, The last three physicians I've had were/are women. My current physician is a Indian woman, and she's the best doc I've ever had in my life. I'm never embarassed with any of the procedures she has to perform - including rectal exams. c.i.
Hey yall!!! I'm home!!!!! Phew - well I'm becoming an old expert at this stuff. Good news is that everything looked REAL GOOD!!!
Doc was impressed with the health and tissue color of the colon.
Took about 30 biopys(sp) just to make sure. It took longer thank expected because of other delays, and I even had to turn over on my belly today, so they could get in ALL the way!! Hey but buttom line is - all is good for the Husker today!!!
now to pass all the extra gas and get some decent food in my system, want those greasy frys and burger - hmmm on the way
Husker:
Good luck! Have a good weekend.
