Gut feeling: colonoscopies are a marvel of modern medicine

About 10 years ago, suffering from some stomach troubles, my family doctor recommended that I do a colonoscopy. I was barely 40 years old, and just the thought

Not even ‘pixelated’ — my ‘gut feeling’ is that these images showing my healthy colon are pretty high resolution images.

of having someone explore my inner workings, by shoving a small camera affixed to a flexible rod — well, you get the picture — made me lose my appetite for a month. When I asked the doctor, whose overall bedside manner (not to mention qualifications for dealing with a mild hypochondriac) was brash at best, “what if the colonoscopy doesn’t find anything,” his answer was: “Then we’ll go in from the other direction and do an endoscopy.”

I ‘freaked out,’ and decided that this doctor was not a good fit for me. When a few months later I read an article in the local Jewish rag about this doctor being part of a team that visited archaeological sites in Israel that used medical endoscopic tools, I realized that I had been dealing with an endoscopy-obsessed physician, and lauded myself for running away from him. Let him use his tools on the archaeological digs — not on me!

Well, for the past ~10 years, I have been dreading the 50 y tune-up. Dreading, fearing, and wondering if I should pass. It’s easy to find pseudo-science to “support” not doing the procedure: Many claim that it’s invasive, and can do more harm than good. After all, some people end up bleeding from a punctured colon. I assume that many of these who oppose this test for screening purposes probably also deny the importance of vaccinations.

Over the years, I have followed the development of the “PillCam Colon,” a pill that carries a miniature camera that will traverse the digestive tract when swallowed and obtain photos of the colon before being excreted (and recovered). But most insurance plans do not yet cover this type of (expensive) procedure, and it is still deemed a weak alternative of the colonoscopy. An additional problem is that during many colonoscopies, small (or larger) polyps are discovered. These are considered to be potential precursors of tumors, and their removal (and pathology testing) is an essential part of the colonoscopy process.

So, I sucked it in and acquiesced to a regular colonoscopy.

Everyone I talked to told me that the procedure itself was ‘nothing,’ that one doesn’t feel a thing, and that it’s easy and no big deal. But it scared the hell out of me. On the other hand, my friends and colleagues all lamented on the horrible “prep” — the need to drink buckets of the laxative to cleanse the colon, and the cleansing itself. That, for some reason, did not scare me.

Well. I was wrong, and they were right. The prep was AWFUL. The same polyethylene glycol that I used years ago to make liposomes was the main laxative in the dense, disgusting-tasting prep. There was about a gallon of “Nu-Lytely” that had to be drunk, in two sittings: from 5-9 pm, and from 2-4 am before the morning of the procedure. Nauseating stuff. I wasn’t sure I could actually do it. But, I did not want to go through the fasting and be forced to eat green ‘Jello’ and clear broth on another day.

On the other hand, the procedure was a piece of cake. They hooked me up to an iv. Put a warm, heated blanket on me until the doctor was ready. They asked me to lie on my side, and the next thing I knew I was waking up after a nice nap. With a clean colon (see images above) and 10 years until the next one!

I did have a tiny 2 mm polyp removed, but the lab found it to be benign.

All in all, I think modern medicine can chalk up a victory (this coming from a hypochondriac), and I hope everyone who can will take advantage of this opportunity for screening.