I am due to go into hospital for a colonoscopy tomorrow. This is something I've been through before and whilst it is for the most part painless there is still some discomfort with the air they pump into you - in fact, that can hurt a lot!
However, it's not the proceedure itself which is the worst part of this, it's the "bowel prep". The hospital used to send an industrial strength laxative called Fleet which, I believe, was manufactured by Satan himself. Two tiny bottles that you mixed with equal amounts of water and then attemted to drink without retching too hard. The taste was supposed to be ginger- lemon but was actually somewhere between salt water and raw effluent - in fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they had simply collected the contents of the bottles from the puddles found on the decks of trawlers off the Fylde coast.
I was relieved to find out that the hospital no longer use Fleet, preferring instead a product called Klean Prep. My joy at this news was short lived when I realised that I had been faced with Klean Prep at a recnt CT Scan. Whilst the taste of it is not as bad as Fleet it's still pretty nasty in that it's salted vanilla (try to imagine that for a second) and this is compounded by the fact that you have to consume FOUR LITRES of the stuff!
I have just downed my first pint, made slightly palatable by the addition of half a bottle of lemon barley water. I'm working myself up to another one just now and expect the explosion to hit my guts sometime in the next two hours. A fun evening is planned!
Oh, and I've had noting except "clear liquid" since Sunday night...so I'm bloody hungry too!
