THE "C" word

No! not that "C" word... COLONOSCOPY. You have to read Lauren's blog about her trip with her mother to the ass doctor. It's hilarious. It's also a pretty common response from people when you try to talk about the subject. Butt holes and what they are connected to are taboo. Being a nurse I feel it is my duty to educate my family and whoever happens to read this about the importance of colonoscopies and to help alleviate your butt function phobias. First of all farting is good for the most part. It pretty much depends on if you are the receiver or the sender. It basically means your bowels and colon are working. The gas is formed because your bowel doesn't have all of the enzymes to break down certain foods and since your bowel is a muscle that is contracting and relaxing to move the digested food through, the gas comes with it and hence the fart. Beano does work by the way, that is if you remember to take it. A healthy bowel should poop everyday. If you aren't then you need to look at a few things like: how much fiber are you getting, are you hydrated, are you eating enough, are you constipated? Your bowel should work like a machine. Food in, poop out. The colonoscopy is a great tool to help find out maybe why you have problems or to see if anything is cooking in there that will cause you problems later. For the record, I have had three colonscopies. I was 36 when I had the first one and it is usually not recommended that you need one until you are over 40 and in some cases 50. I was going in for some colon repair work (caused by childbirth) and my doctor said that he was going to do a colonoscopy as well since he was going to be down there anyway. Since I was being violated anyway and I was going to be completely out I figured what the heck. He found 3 polyps, 2 of which were precancerous. Kind of freaked me out. 1 years later I had another one and he found a polyp. Finally the third one I was squeaky clean. During the colonoscopy the doctor looks for raised polyps and even flat lesions that may be suspicious. If he finds them he removes them at that time. polyps are usually benign (not cancerous), but if left in the colon they can turn cancerous. Which is what the 2 polyps that I had were doing. I think about what would I be dealing with now had I not went in and had the colonoscopy when I did. Our family needs to be diligent with our health concerns because the McKee side of the family has a high incidence of cancer. My grandpa McKee died of colon cancer. Family history of cancers puts us at a higher risk. Colon cancer is curable if caught early. Colonoscopies really aren't that bad. The worst part is drinking the prep the day before. Then, your given some nice drugs so you won't even remember the procedure. Afterwards the nurse will encourage you to fart. How cool is that...permission to fart. You should have no pain. The next day it's like it never happened.
This has been a public service announcement from nurse Patti. (Sarah is going to love that the blog right before her birthday announcement is about butts.)