Colonoscopy prep fail. Please help!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How did they determine you weren't completely cleaned out?

My friend had the unfortunate experience of throwing up the dratted liquid all night (she tried to contact their office without success to let them know), then being placed under in the morning, explored, etc, only to be told the results were inconclusive because she wasn't cleaned out enough, and she'd have to redo the entire thing soon.

Consider yourself lucky you escaped general anesthesia.

There are many people who don't do well with the prep, and research is ongoing to find better ways of exploring intestines. Contact the doctor to discuss a different prep.

Sorry for the TMI, but the nurse asked about my poop when I arrived and said if it was anything except clear or yellow I needed to use the bathroom and let her look at it. It was kind of embarrassing, but I am glad I didn't go through with a useless procedure. She also got a second opinion from the charge nurse.

The problem with contacting the doctor directly is that I tried to get in touch with her before the procedure (about timing of migraine meds) and she never responded. Unless the person who does scheduling is adept at discussing options, I'm feeling like there isn't a good way to get information from them about what will work better. Hence my idea to try to figure it out on my own and then make a specific request when I call to schedule.

Thanks for responding. Not TMI in this context, it's useful to know!

[Anonymous]

You should be able to get an answer from your doctor. Can you send a message in MyChart? Call and ask to speak to the doctor’s nurse, explain your concern and ask for the doctor to call you back?

I personally wouldn’t worry too much though. There must be a relatively standard approach for patients whose initial prep didn’t work. You could google that and check. To me, starting a clean out early with a couple of days of Miralax followed by the normal prep sounds logically like it should work fine. Do you normally have constipation? If so, maybe work in taking Miralax ahead of time to resolve that before you start the Miralax plus prep directed by the doctors office.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How did they determine you weren't completely cleaned out?

My friend had the unfortunate experience of throwing up the dratted liquid all night (she tried to contact their office without success to let them know), then being placed under in the morning, explored, etc, only to be told the results were inconclusive because she wasn't cleaned out enough, and she'd have to redo the entire thing soon.

Consider yourself lucky you escaped general anesthesia.

There are many people who don't do well with the prep, and research is ongoing to find better ways of exploring intestines. Contact the doctor to discuss a different prep.

Sorry for the TMI, but the nurse asked about my poop when I arrived and said if it was anything except clear or yellow I needed to use the bathroom and let her look at it. It was kind of embarrassing, but I am glad I didn't go through with a useless procedure. She also got a second opinion from the charge nurse.

The problem with contacting the doctor directly is that I tried to get in touch with her before the procedure (about timing of migraine meds) and she never responded. Unless the person who does scheduling is adept at discussing options, I'm feeling like there isn't a good way to get information from them about what will work better. Hence my idea to try to figure it out on my own and then make a specific request when I call to schedule.

Go find another doctor. During initial consultation, your doctor should've given you different options and the recommendation.

There is no initial consultation. My primary care doc refers, then the office calls me to schedule. I am not in DC, but near two major medical centers and they both seem to work this way. My primary care doc is great but I've never been able to speak to a specialist with whom I didn't already have an established relationship, and I doubt primary care doc will be able to advise on this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How did they determine you weren't completely cleaned out?

My friend had the unfortunate experience of throwing up the dratted liquid all night (she tried to contact their office without success to let them know), then being placed under in the morning, explored, etc, only to be told the results were inconclusive because she wasn't cleaned out enough, and she'd have to redo the entire thing soon.

Consider yourself lucky you escaped general anesthesia.

There are many people who don't do well with the prep, and research is ongoing to find better ways of exploring intestines. Contact the doctor to discuss a different prep.

Sorry for the TMI, but the nurse asked about my poop when I arrived and said if it was anything except clear or yellow I needed to use the bathroom and let her look at it. It was kind of embarrassing, but I am glad I didn't go through with a useless procedure. She also got a second opinion from the charge nurse.

The problem with contacting the doctor directly is that I tried to get in touch with her before the procedure (about timing of migraine meds) and she never responded. Unless the person who does scheduling is adept at discussing options, I'm feeling like there isn't a good way to get information from them about what will work better. Hence my idea to try to figure it out on my own and then make a specific request when I call to schedule.

Go find another doctor. During initial consultation, your doctor should've given you different options and the recommendation.

There is no initial consultation. My primary care doc refers, then the office calls me to schedule. I am not in DC, but near two major medical centers and they both seem to work this way. My primary care doc is great but I've never been able to speak to a specialist with whom I didn't already have an established relationship, and I doubt primary care doc will be able to advise on this.

That.Really.Sucks.

I still think you are missing a step here somewhere. Going straight from your primary to surgery table doesn't seem right to me. I had one hour long appt with my GI doc who worked on me.

[Anonymous]

I know the docs say the two part preparation is better but I don’t think the volume is enough in either session and it just doesn’t work for some people.

There’s a thing being advertised now called Hygiprep that is a colonic lavage where they wash everything out just before the procedure. You might want to look into that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Someone just posted on here how a friend or neighbor just died of colon cancer and he said he had done the poop in a box thing and it missed his cancer. Poop in a box won't catch precancerous polyps as I understand it.

Color guard only detects blood in the sample. Precancerous polyps don’t bleed. Slow growing, relatively large, cancerous tumors sometimes bleed. The colonoscopy removes the polyps, some pre-cancerous, before blood is present in a sample and before it can become cancerous.
I do not understand how Colorguard gives any peace of mind (unless you only want to know when you have a big ole bleeding tumor).

[Anonymous]

There are pills for prep?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone just posted on here how a friend or neighbor just died of colon cancer and he said he had done the poop in a box thing and it missed his cancer. Poop in a box won't catch precancerous polyps as I understand it.

Color guard only detects blood in the sample. Precancerous polyps don’t bleed. Slow growing, relatively large, cancerous tumors sometimes bleed. The colonoscopy removes the polyps, some pre-cancerous, before blood is present in a sample and before it can become cancerous.
I do not understand how Colorguard gives any peace of mind (unless you only want to know when you have a big ole bleeding tumor).

That's why the commercial says "false negative or positive results are possible"! Translation? Try it but you may die.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are pills for prep?

There are but it's like 40 of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Someone just posted on here how a friend or neighbor just died of colon cancer and he said he had done the poop in a box thing and it missed his cancer. Poop in a box won't catch precancerous polyps as I understand it.

Yes--please get the colonscopy. Mine discovered a very small tumor that was causing no symptoms that never would have been picked up by a stool test. Colon cancer is the most preventable cancer there is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone just posted on here how a friend or neighbor just died of colon cancer and he said he had done the poop in a box thing and it missed his cancer. Poop in a box won't catch precancerous polyps as I understand it.

Yes--please get the colonscopy. Mine discovered a very small tumor that was causing no symptoms that never would have been picked up by a stool test. Colon cancer is the most preventable cancer there is.

Yet, so many die from it every day

[Anonymous]

Would you consider using another doctor? TMI warning: I ask because I had been told by several people that their procedures were cancelled because they were still "going" (clear, but liquid still coming out). I had that experience--I was still having liquid leak out while in the waiting room. I was honest with the nurse and she said it was fine and they went ahead with the procedure. From that I took away that it can all depend on the doctor/facility. So sorry you had to go through what I thought was a nightmare (all night on the toilet) for nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Someone just posted on here how a friend or neighbor just died of colon cancer and he said he had done the poop in a box thing and it missed his cancer. Poop in a box won't catch precancerous polyps as I understand it.

This is correct. Cologuard doesn't catch polyps.

I'm high risk because my grandma died of colon cancer but I watched her go through it and it was just an awful way to go. It's hard but worth it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Would you consider using another doctor? TMI warning: I ask because I had been told by several people that their procedures were cancelled because they were still "going" (clear, but liquid still coming out). I had that experience--I was still having liquid leak out while in the waiting room. I was honest with the nurse and she said it was fine and they went ahead with the procedure. From that I took away that it can all depend on the doctor/facility. So sorry you had to go through what I thought was a nightmare (all night on the toilet) for nothing.

It sounds like OPs experience was different - clear or yellow is okay, but brown is not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone just posted on here how a friend or neighbor just died of colon cancer and he said he had done the poop in a box thing and it missed his cancer. Poop in a box won't catch precancerous polyps as I understand it.

Yes--please get the colonoscopy. Mine discovered a very small tumor that was causing no symptoms that never would have been picked up by a stool test. Colon cancer is the most preventable cancer there is.

Yet, so many die from it every day

This x 1,000.

ColoGuard has low sensitivity for detecting colorectal cancer (70%-75% using colonoscopy as the criterion standard). Sensitivity is also low for precursor lesions, approximately 20% to 25% for advanced adenomas and less than 5% for advanced sessile serrated polyps. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6771036/

I have no colon cancer in my family and no known risk factors but was diagnosed (via colonoscopy) at age 44. Thank God it was caught at stage III, which is not early but I'm lucky enough to still be here 7 years later.