Like my view? This past week I dreaded my (now) every three-year colonoscopy. The last time I had a colonoscopy, the doctor removed three polyps (which often left untreated can develop into cancer) and because of that I’ve been bumped from every five years, which is normal, to every three years. My dad died from colon cancer at 45 and my brother died of adenoma-carcinoma (which may or may not have started in his colon) when he was 40 so this just makes sense.

The actual test is a piece of cake. I was in and out of the procedure center in an hour and a half and the procedure itself took only about 30 minutes. But that’s the easy part of this test. It’s the colon prep that is AWFUL.

When I first scheduled the colonoscopy, the nurse sent the colon prep prescription to my pharmacy. I picked it up and when the pharmacy tech handed it to me, she grinned and said “I see you’re going to have fun!” I laughed at that knowing full well she knew what I was in for and her smile was great. I took the large package home and put it on the floor of the linen closet. Each time I opened the closet for the next month, I was reminded of what I would have to do to prepare for the colonoscopy.

I really started fretting about it last week. When I talked to my son about having to drink an entire gallon of the prep solution, he told me there were other ways of doing it. He said a co-worker of his who is a colon cancer survivor, told him of a less burdensome prep. This prep involves taking Dulcolax tablets several hours before starting to drink the prep solution. The prep solution is a bottle of Miralax (or the generic equivalent) mixed with only 64 ounces of Gatorade. That’s half the liquid volume that was prescribed by my doctor and much more appealing. I did quite a bit of googling and found that this colon prep is used quite often and several of websites (from gastroenterologists) also allowed a light breakfast on the liquid diet day. This also was a game changer. I decided this was the prep I was going to do.

At 7:00 a.m. on the morning of the liquid diet day, I ate an English muffin with real butter (something I don’t normally do because although I love (love, love, love) real butter, it has a ton of calories and points. I figured since I wasn’t getting anything else that day, I could splurge.  The rest of the day was only fruit bars (which I later realized were five WW points each, ugh) and tea. The very big lesson I learned is that after you have taken the Dulocax tablets and your stomach starts rumbling, run, don’t walk, to the bathroom, or, you’ll be sorry. I was.

I chose a white cherry Gatorade for my prep mix and I’m so glad I did. It tasted very good and being refrigerated for several hours before I drank it, made the prep mix much more pleasant. Three hours after the Ducolax, I drank it in 8-ounce glasses every 15 minutes for an hour and then repeated that process five hours later. I started the midnight prep an hour earlier than the instructions because I definitely didn’t want to have an “awe shit” moment (literally) on the way to the endoscopy center.

I arrived at the center at 6:30 a.m. and by 8:30, I was sitting in a restaurant eating breakfast. Three more polyps and three diverticulosis sites, but I’m good to go for another three years.

If you have a history of colon cancer in your family, or if you are over 45 years old, do the test and save your life. I’m working on getting my son to do it now.