Bowel Prep

For most people the mere thought of a colonoscopy is frightening. As one who has had several I can assure you: they really aren’t that bad. One minute you’re lying in a hospital bed with a needle stuck in the top of your hand. Next minute the sedation flows and you drift away. Before you know it, you’re waking up and it’s over. You can eat again.

So fear not; there is nothing to worry about. There is no lingering, post-procedure discomfort. You barely know what happened. As FDR said in a much different context, the only thing you have to fear is, etc etc.

There is a bad part, of course. There always is. It comes the day before, when you have to drink a magic potion known generically as a purgative.

Purgative. Noun.

|pur-guh-tiv| 1. A purging medicine; stimulates evacuation of the bowels. 2. A strong laxative.

It’s evil stuff, and there are several liters to glug down. Drinking this brew, and enduring what happens afterward, is referred to as bowel prep.

Bowel prep.

I cannot say that enough. Bowel prep. It is so suggestive, and sounds so repulsive.

Bowel Prep

When you Google “bowel prep” you get hits like “Six Tips for Easier Colonoscopy Prep,” “Eight Expert Tips,” “4 Steps on How to Prepare for...”and so on.

Articles like this are not entirely useless. But they’re all pretty much the same, the number of tips notwithstanding. If you’ve read one, you’ve read ’em all.

The WebMD site, for instance, shares this pearl: “Your colon has to be empty and clean for your doctor to get a proper look at it. To make that happen, you’ll have to fast and use strong laxatives beforehand.”

Strong laxatives? Pwah.

The bowel prep is usually in liquid form: a noxious swill (mine was lemon-lime) that’ll give you diarrhea like you have never experienced – not in this life. You blast out hamburgers, pâté de foie gras, and pork rinds lite you ate six months ago. Talk about a world of shit!

Why am I writing this? I just had another colonoscopy the other day. There is a history of colon cancer in my family, so it’s my pleasure to get one every few years. For most people ten year intervals are sufficient. This time it got delayed twice, thanks to COVID-19. I am pleased to report a clean bill of health.

Colonoscopies really are the best way to detect and prevent a killer disease. But the bowel prep is a total drag. The procedure itself? A piece of cake!