Colonoscopy Prep Tomorrow

Since I’m sharing too much information already, here’s the actual instructions from the prep sheet:

DAY PRIOR TO PROCEDURE
Begin a clear liquid diet from the moment you wake up in the morning
Prepare your solution according to the direction on the container and refrigerate
Be sure to drink an extra 8oz of clear liquid every hour from 11am to 5pm (Gatorade preferred) to keep hydrated, it can be more than 8 oz.
At 6pm begin to drink prep solution 8 oz every 10min until 1/2 of it is consumed
Place remainder of the solution into the refrigerator

GAS TABLET
9pm take 2 gas tablets with 8oz clear liquid
10pm take 2 gas tablets with 88oz clear liquid

Continue drinking clear fluid until bedtime/midnight

DO NOT TAKE ANYTHING BY MOUTH AFTER MIDNIGHT
Except the morning dose of the prep.
Beginning 4 hours before your arrival time drink the remaining solution: 8oz every 10 minutes until solution is gone.

Do take BLOOD PRESSURE and/or HEART MEDICATION the morning or procedure with a SIP of water.
all other medications hold until after the procedure.

HAVE NOTHING BY MOUTH 3 HOURS BEFORE YOUR ARRIVAL TIME.

First, as a former “professional” typesetter (I worked at an advertising agency part-time for one year while in school), the formatting (bold/italics/capitalization/spacing) drives me crazy. I think they wanted to highlight certain points but there are only a few lines of instructions. The inconsistent formatting actually makes the page look chaotic and harder to read. Not what you want for a list of medical instuctions.

Second, my procedure arrival time is 7:00 am on Tuesday, so I moved my dialysis session to Monday (tomorrow) at 5:00 pm to 9:00 pm. I’m afraid the prep solution will cause diarrhea in order to flush out your GI tract so I can’t start taking the solution until after 9:30 pm. I have to push back the prior day schedule by 3+ hours but still get up at 3:00 am Tuesday morning to finish the prep solutions. I think I’m going to take tomorrow off from work, sleep the entire day, and just stay up after dialysis until I’m done with the procedure the next morning. Probably will spend the entire time sitting on the toilet anyway.

Finally, as I mentioned before, that’s a lot of fluid intake. I finished dialysis at 78.4 kg yesterday so I’ll drink until I get to ~80.5 kg since I don’t want more than 3,000 mL of UF at dialysis, especially if it may be a shortened session. Hopefully I will feel well enough after the procedure to pig-out for lunch Tuesday.