Recently, I embarked on a painless colonoscopy gastroscopy in the hospital, and the process was so twisty and bizarre that it could be written as a novel. Therefore, I decided to record it as a reference for friends who may also experience this kind of "ordeal" in the future, and it can be regarded as a preventive shot for you in advance!
I have always felt that my digestive system is a bit "rebellious", and I often swipe those probiotic advertisements on Douyin, saying that it is amazing, as if it can be effective immediately after eating. So, I opened the shopping website with great interest, and it turned out that there were so many types of probiotics that it was like entering a maze. After thinking about it, I still felt that I had to find a professional doctor to help, so I decided to go to the hospital and hang up a gastroenterology department.
After listening to my description, the doctor actually recommended that I have a colonoscopy first. He said that middle-aged people over the age of 35 had better check whether the intestines are healthy first, and after ruling out the problems of the intestines themselves, it is not too late to consider probiotics. I also suggested that I do the gastroscopy by the way, although the gastroscopy is only "incidental", but the preparation process of the colonoscopy is quite cumbersome. There are two kinds of this kind of examination: ordinary and painless, and the painless feeling is of course better, but it requires general anesthesia, which requires certain requirements for the patient's physical fitness. This had to be judged by the anesthesiology doctor, so I went to the anesthesiology department again. The anesthesiologist asked me a bunch of questions, such as whether I had high blood pressure, whether I had surgery, whether I had drug allergies, etc.
Fortunately, I still met the requirements of general anesthesia, so I decided to have a painless gastroscopy and colonoscopy.
After paying the fee, I got two medicines prescribed by the doctor, one was a powdered laxative and the other was dimethicone powder. Then, I went to the hospital to make an appointment for a gastroscopy and colonoscopy. The little nurse at the appointment office told me that I had to fast food and water the day before the examination, and I chose the morning examination time, thinking that it would be acceptable to endure it all night and wake up to have an examination. As a result, the little nurse directly gave me a "thunderbolt on a sunny day", she said that she couldn't sleep the night before, and she had to take laxatives all the time, poop many times, and clean her intestines before she could do an examination.
According to the bowel preparation notice provided by the hospital, I had to pay special attention to my diet the day before the colonoscopy. To put it simply, on this day, I could only eat easily digestible foods such as white porridge, white rice, clear soup noodles, and boiled eggs, and I could not eat hard and indigestible foods, any vegetables, fruits, or seasonings or drinks with coloring. Non-ordinary people, such as people who are particularly obese, with diabetes, Parkinson's disease, depression, etc., also need to pay attention to dietary preparation 3 days in advance. On the day of colonoscopy, no food or drink is allowed, which is simply "hungry" for its body and skin!
Do not eat or drink for 6 hours and drink water for 2 hours before colonoscopy. In fact, I started to prepare my bowels 6 hours before the test. During bowel cleansing, plenty of water should be drunk, but the upper limit is 4 liters. In order to better control the total amount of water, I prepared 2 bottles of 2L Nongfu Spring bottled water.
There are 2 packs of laxatives prepared by the hospital, which should be diluted with 1L of drinking water in turn, and it is recommended to drink 1L of water 4 times, with an interval of 15 minutes each time, so that 2L can be drunk in exactly 2 hours. I used Nongfu Spring, and after diluting the laxative, the taste was still a little pineapple, a little bit sweet. As a result, after drinking 1L of water and 1 packet of laxatives, I didn't feel anything at all. In order to strengthen the effect of intestinal peristalsis, I also went downstairs and walked in the community for a while, but there was still no response. So I started to drink the second pack of laxatives with trepidation, but at this point I finally started to feel like pooping.
After drinking the laxative, I also had to drink dimethicone powder, which is an antifoam that eliminates air bubbles in the gastrointestinal tract and improves the vision of the gastroscopy. Then, I started to look at the excrement to judge the results of the bowel cleansing. In the best case, the last excrement pulled out is like water, indicating that the intestines are cleaned. As a result, I realized that I was far from meeting this standard, so I drank hard until I vomited before reaching the upper limit of 4L. Finally, after a few rounds of excretion, my excrement was almost clear watery. At this point, it's almost time for me to leave.
Because there will be a period of significant discomfort and mobility after general anesthesia, this examination requires an adult family member to accompany you. If the symptoms are severe after waking up from anesthesia, I am not allowed to drive for 24 hours, so I called a taxi to the hospital. My exam appointment was at 8:40 a.m., so I arrived at the hospital 20 minutes early. After handing over the appointment form to the nurse at the colonoscopy registry, the long wait began.
It wasn't until 9:30 a.m. that the nurse called me into the examination area and asked me to bring my medical insurance card and other things that could prove my identity, and leave my bag and other items with my family members who accompanied me outside. In fact, this is still a waiting area, and the long wait continues. Here, the nurse gave me a liquid to drop in my mouth and swallow. After a few minutes, I noticed that my tongue started to go numb, and then from my tongue to my throat. It appears that the liquid compound should have been swallowed just now, and the main function is to anesthetize the mucosa of the throat and esophagus, reduce discomfort, and remove mucus and foam from the stomach to improve the clarity of the examination.
Next, the nurse put a needle in the back of my right hand and injected some medicine, which should be an anesthetic or a tranquilizer. Because he didn't sleep the night before and fasted for a long time, he began to be a little confused at this time, and his mouth was numb, and the whole person was in a bad state. At this time, there was still a long wait, and the person seemed to be in a trance as he sat in the chair. Every once in a while, I see a nurse pushing a small cart with a patient on board. After the trolley is pushed aside, when the patient wakes up from anesthesia, the nurse will take his health insurance card and tell the family members waiting outside with his name, so that the family members can come and help him out. Some of the patients pushed in the trolley fell asleep quietly, while others snored loudly.
Half an hour later, the nurse finally called my name. I slept in a small trolley as the nurse had instructed, which was not a standard hospital bed, a little shorter and narrower. The nurse had me lying on my side with my back against a board and my legs curled up. The nurse covered me with a cloth and told me to take off my pants and underwear under the cloth and fade to my knees, then put her hands on the cloth and pressed the cloth. At this point I felt very tired, closed my eyes and seemed to start sleeping, and after that I didn't know anything.
Half an hour later, I found myself lying in the car, and my family members were already beside me helping me to slowly get out of the car. I stepped on the ground, not steady, and I felt like I was drunk and my feet were vain. Staggering, with the help of my family, I walked to the waiting area and sat down in a chair. At this time, my mind was not completely clear, and I seemed to be able to understand what my family was saying to me, but I couldn't seem to remember, and I was still in a trance. After sitting for a while, his mind began to clear up a bit, and then he staggered to the toilet for a while. The family stuffed me with 2 pieces of paper, which turned out to be an endoscopy report, one for gastroscopy and the other for colonoscopy. The official report will take up to 3 working days to get it back to the hospital.
At this point, you can already leave the hospital and go home. I staggered out of the hospital with the help of my family, hailed a taxi on Didi, and went home. On the way home, I chatted with the driver casually, and at this time, except for some mental malaise, there was basically no other discomfort. When I got home, I felt so tired that I fell asleep. About an hour or so, I woke up, and by this time the person's condition had basically recovered. Only then did I have the energy to drink water and eat something.
Overall, doing a painless colonoscopy plus gastroscopy is like going to a "ghost gate"! But the good news is that the test results are normal, and the bad news is that doctors say that it is best for middle-aged people to have another colonoscopy every few years. Hey, it looks like I'm going to have to get on with this colonoscopy!
Schematic diagram of the digestive system
gastroscopy
Colonoscopy