“Pretty sure “surprise colonoscopy” is the worst way ever to begin a week.” — Aileen Jeffries, my Facebook wall

Via a spectacular collapse in communication management (theirs, not mine), I have come to a situation wherein I didn’t know that I was less than 24 hours away from being knocked out and probed with cameras from both ends. One might wonder how that could happen, but let’s leave it outside of the scope of this post. Long and irritating story.

The upshot at the moment is, though I haven’t had a real meal since 3PM yesterday (Sunday), I’m on a forced clear-liquid diet and won’t be able to eat again until around noon tomorrow (Tuesday).

This will not be my first colonoscopy by far, but it is my first endoscopy (top end, in through the pie hole).

This is the first time, however, that the prep will be entirely accomplished using over-the-counter reagents, and I find that somehow titillating. I felt like I was mixing up some sort of illicit, possibly explosive, goop on my countertop.

For the curious, this procedure involves the following:

• One 14-dose bottle of Miralax powder (238 gram size).
• 64 ounces of your sports drink or powdered drink mix of choice. Restrictions are: non-carbonated, no red or blue dyes. This mostly eliminates all flavors but citrus, which is a bit of a shame. My vintage picks today are G2 (lower-calorie Gatorade) “Tiger” flavor mixed with G2 lemon-lime.
• 4 Dulcolax tablets

Put the lime in the coconut, you drank ‘em both up — Harry Nilsson

I poured both Gatorades into a 1/2 gallon Pyrex container that has a pouring lip. Then in goes the Miralax in a granular cascade. Mix, mix mix. Then I added a grip of ice cubes and put the mix in the fridge.

Lyza’s tip: Always chill the hell out of your goop before ingesting. Far less nauseating that way!

Now I wait until noon, when I will take one dulcolax every 15 minutes. At 1:30 or so, I’ll start drinking glass after glass of my goop until it’s gone. This is no mean feat and takes focus and ninja-like endurance.

During all of this you are encouraged to ingest clear fluids. After midnight, nothing by mouth.

At 11:18AM, my stats are as follows:

• Body weight: 118.6 pounds
• Body temperature: 98.1 F

(I tend to run low, temperature-wise).

My experiment will be to see how much weight I drop and how much my core temperature suffers.

The goop acts as antifreeze, and my body like a radiator, when I go through this prep. Normally I end up with chills. I want to see just how much actual temperature change I experience!

Disclaimer: Please do not use this blog post as directions on how to actually prep for your colonoscopy. I’ve left out a lot of details and might well be mis-representing a few things. Talk to your doctor!