colonoscopy

[LaoziSailor]

HEY Sue,

First, talk to your doc about exactly how horrible this is for someone with SCI and no home health care (do you know an agency that wants to send help for bowel prep?).
....snip...

...oooh my, now you've done it Sue! yikes, I'm not so sure about going ahead with this.

SCI-Nurse (KLD) was thorough enough in the procedure description, to include "virtual colonoscopy" as requiring this prep as well -- I was under the impression (being a techno citizen) that I was going to swallow a device and it would happily transverse my GI tract and show the whole journey on the monitor after recovery (koan: ...would an alarm sound when the journey was complete? )
I guess there is an opportunity for development here...

Although here (in Canada) we don't have to worry (too much) about health care, I suspect it would still require some doing to get the prep done in a hospital. While the rehab centre would be very well equipped to handle the SCI associated issues, the logistics for transport, scheduling at the hospital, etc., would still be a big challenge.

Cheers!

[SCI-Nurse]

Regardless of which end the monitoring device goes into your GI tract, you still have to get cleaned out in order to see what needs to be seen. The regular colonoscope goes in the rectum, the virtual camera is swallowed and then defecated. That is the only difference.

(KLD)

[bob clark]

I'm 50 so I should have a colonoscopy done. But I'd be a little leery about staying there for 23 hours "stinking" up the place. The last time I was in the hospital for 2 days it was with a severely broken leg. They put me in a room with some healthy AB guy who just had minor laparoscopic surgery on his knee. I'm glad I didn't need for a bowel movement while there but I worried about it a lot. I'd be embarrassed to stink up the room for this fellow and his guests. Those "curtains" ain't nuthin'.

I wish they'd bring back private hospital rooms, group patients together for things like this or build a Spinal Cord Injury Center in my area.

Maybe I'm just too sensitive about things like this.

[Sue Pendleton]

HEY Sue,
...oooh my, now you've done it Sue! yikes, I'm not so sure about going ahead with this.

SCI-Nurse (KLD) was thorough enough in the procedure description, to include "virtual colonoscopy" as requiring this prep as well -- I was under the impression (being a techno citizen) that I was going to swallow a device and it would happily transverse my GI tract and show the whole journey on the monitor after recovery (koan: ...would an alarm sound when the journey was complete? )
I guess there is an opportunity for development here...

Although here (in Canada) we don't have to worry (too much) about health care, I suspect it would still require some doing to get the prep done in a hospital. While the rehab centre would be very well equipped to handle the SCI associated issues, the logistics for transport, scheduling at the hospital, etc., would still be a big challenge.

Cheers!

Smokey and Han,

I was sent up to a regular "medical floor". People recovering from surgeries that were stable, some long term disease folks in for chemo and the like. Just make sure that the admitting doctor write orders for every gross thing you can imagine and don't expect to get a nurse with a good imagination like I did. With that tube I could sleep through an hour or so at a time before drinking the next bottle of prime bubbly. Make sure they write you are NOT to be left on a bedpan for the entire time and turning is needed as is possible considering. Oh, and what kind of caths you use or don't, etc. The main RN I had asked me to quickly go over how to do an intermittant because she was used to only doing foleys (make sure the non-business end is in the collection device!). I was put in a private room with a seperate suite area. I think they try to give you as much privacy as they can. I sure didn't ask for and my insurance wouldn't pay for a private room unless it was all that was available. And hospitls use that orange oil spray liberally if it is needed. Colonoscopy prep is nothing on the odor scale compared to C. Difficile.

Han? You have the right idea but for the wrong test. There is a tiny capsule with camera that a person can swallow, recover later and then the slide show shows docs areas of the digestive system that some cancers can form in or ulcers but can't be seen well or at all by any other method.

A virtual colonoscopy, if I understand it correctly, must be done standing. And even at 43 they found 2 polyps they cut off to test in me. So if the virtual finds something, like KLD said, you have to do the bowel prep all over again because they can't just stick a scissor up there and whack it off.

Oh, and with my 23 hour stay my clothes were waiting for me in recovery after the test and a nurse helped me dress. Then my husband came in to take me home.

Oops, KLD, am I wrong on the camera swallowing gizmo? I thought that was for upper intestinal areas?

Bob, have your doc request as much privacy as possible or an old fart for a roommate. They've seen it all and most are slowly loosing their sense of smell (just like we will some day). If you get a roommate that you don't feel like you can endure the prep with because of guests ask your nurse to limit guests.

[SCI-Nurse]

The virtual colonoscopy is a camera that is swallowed and is removed through defecation. This shows the lower GI tract.
An endoscopy is the procedure that shows the upper GI tract, a camera with a tube is inserted into your upper tract by the doctor and then is removed by pulling it out.

AAD

[Sue Pendleton]

Thanks AAD. I was probably thinking of the whole body scan from an Oprah Show.