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It’s not fun.
In my case, I was told to only eat ‘white foods’ with no seeds or fiber for a week beforehand - so lots of tortillas, white bread, peeled apples, applesauce, yogurt, kefir, tofu, chicken breast, and oatmeal.
Then I had three days of only liquids – so just fruit juice, water, kefir, and tea.
On the last day came drinking lots of the Prep liquid, which tastes like very salty cherry cough syrup. It’s designed to make you expel any possible material from your colon. Explosively and repeatedly.
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Yeah, I’m taking my chances. Besides all of the negatives you described, I asked my doctor if the consent form really states that perforating your colon must be accepted as one of the risks of the procedure and is not considered negligence or malpractice. Well, it does. I’m not going to put myself in that situation. I know the risk is small, but so is my risk for colon cancer. If something robotic that is safer comes along, I’ll consider it.
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I’m guessing it transmits the images wirelessly (who’d want to plug in that cable?).
In which case, its another for the Internet of Things in Your Butt - http://boingboing.net/2016/01/14/the-internet-of-things-in-your.html
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I have my colonoscopy looming in the future (everyone says the prep is the worst part). One of the things that this robot doesn’t seem able to do is clip the polyps the procedure usually finds, which could eliminate on of the benefits of the way they do things now. Although maybe that’s what the spikes are for. Brrrrr…
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“From their research abstract: Traditional colonoscopy requires highly trained personnel to be performed.”
Personnel… to be performed.
I see.
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my god, what kind of degenerate would read something like and immediately think of hijacking a bunch of them and then using them on Republican Senators as a piece of performance art!
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I do not recognise all this prep stuff. In the UK, I was given a small bottle of phosphate solution which I had to drink. You were recommended to drink this with a toilet nearby, and this cleared you out. That was it. I then went to the hospital and had the colonoscopy. I was surprised how pink and clean I was on the inside. I don’t see how eating white foods would have helped.
One of the painful things was they had to inflate me, partly to get a good view of the tube, and partly to avoid hitting the sides when going in. This left me very full of gas, with no good way of getting it out. I would imagine anything that crawled might be able to hold the colon wall out to get a good view without this inflation.
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“Whaddya mean there’s no reverse?”
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Before I had mine, I did a little research and learned that they’re done very differently in the UK, without the extensive prep and without the amnesiac sedation that’s automatically given to you in the US unless you opt out. The whole “white food” thing seemed ridiculous to me, too. All of the literature the hospital gave me said that if they started the procedure and found any fecal matter in my colon, they’d abort the procedure and I’d have to do the prep all over again, so I followed their instructions to the letter, however.
They didn’t so much inflate me as the endoscope blew some air ahead of itself to open the tube as it went. It definitely left gas inside and they had me massage my belly until I expelled most of it afterwards.
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Let’s name the robot… Biff.
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OK, maybe not mine, but it’s definitely someone’s.
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That timeframe fits very nicely with my doctors recommendation to get one in 5 or so years. I’d prefer a pill cam or a standard camera to a wriggling worm. I’ve had a gastroscopy (and woke up in the middle of it, not recommended) and I realized how much less awful a colonoscopy must be.
Just so long as it isn’t IoT enabled. That just BEGS Rule 34.
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Possibly the only time I would agree that Cory’s favorite phrase, Internet of Shit, would be appropriate.
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Wow, I only did the two-day prep. I’ve heard of a week long prep, but know of no one who was told to do it among eight family members who’ve had the exam in the past couple of years.
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In talking to family members, it sounds like the prep time and instructions vary wildly from doctor to doctor. Some say to eat nothing with seeds, others say it doesn’t matter. My doc said she’d been doing hers the same way for 20+ years so I’m sure newer doctors have more efficient ideas.
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My father has had several. He usually did a two day prep and the night before the actual cleanse he would mix up the gallon or so jug of whatever it is and add a heap of Gatorade powder to it. Chill over night, power chug half or more in an hour, place back in fridge, take reading material to bathroom…repeat with 16oz glasses ever hour or so…
I get to start at 40…fucking fun.
(Personally I’m going to start training on enemas… The standard seems to be about 2L, so I figure if I can do that whatever cleansing needs to be done shouldn’t be bad.)
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The little “speed x35” thing worries me. I wouldn’t want it to take a two week holiday spelunking, as it were.
Thanx for the info, as (given the age recommendations) I’m facing this in a few years, unless they invent and approve the Jetsons robot pill in the meantime.
But when I said “I must profess complete ignorance/innocence,” I meant in reference to whether Rule 34 applies to the preparation for a colonoscopy (as you described, “expel any possible material from your colon. Explosively and repeatedly.”). Rule 34 most certainly applies to the procedure itself, or at least to some pornographer brandishing a functionally similar apparatus.
Again, the rule applies. What has been seen cannot be unseen.
Aha, understood. Where r34 is concerned, I also plead innocence!
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