me too! I had a precancerous polyp that they discovered 25 years ago and took out and haven’t had any more, but i get a colonoscopy every 5 years. Prep is horrible of course. Haven’t noticed too much effect on blood sugar but I’m more concerned about other things at that point.
I hope that medical technology will advance in the next several years so that there are other, less-invasive ways of checking intestinal health. But I think that if I hadn’t had that first colonoscopy back in 2000 I would not be writing this today. So I’m grateful for my doctor’s diligence.
Congrats on the A1C and all your health improvements.
I do not want to imply people shouldn’t get a colonoscopy. I had known people through my store that have died from colon cancer. We just have special pitfalls in approaching one than others do. And no matter how well I planned, sigh, various things went screwy. The procedure and being knocked out were super easy.
Good morning, loved your post! I am not going to get into to much. I get yearly endoscopy’s, I had Barrett’s esophagus in 2013, had 6 Halo surgeries. I get rechecks to look for return.
I also get yearly Colonoscopies since around 2012, I have an internal hernia and I am a polyp making machine, year before last my procedure lasted almost 4 hours, they stopped counting after 35 polyps removed, 7 were so large they had to put surgical clamps in place to close the wound, I want to say 5 were classified as dysplasia. And have 3 areas of diverticulitis also.
I have other gastrointestinal issues and last year had to reschedule first attempt due to not being cleaned out enough, net try they stretched out the prep to a week, and still wasn’t really good but she made due. I have them in May and June this year and a not looking forward to the colonoscopy prep this year.
But yea I really like being out. The very first colonoscopy I got was around 1983 and I woke up during surgery when he was removing polyps and was watching it on the tv, doc joked I was going to be literally blowing smoke out my ***, I wasn’t awake long before they knocked me out. Afterwards doc told my wife they gave me enough to knock out an elephant and I was still talking to him.
As much as I enjoyed the prep last time (NOT) there was one little complication for me the day of my last procedure. Believe it or not, Kaiser here in SoCal had given me written ‘instructions for diabetics’ that said “If on the morning of your procedure, your blood sugar is 100 or higher, take your usual dose of insulin.” I thought that was odd, but did as instructed (I was just over 100). Several hours later, I walk into the prep room, and someone noticed on my chart that I was a diabetic, so they decided to check my blood sugar. It was 20 and dropping. I was still sitting up and talking, but even I noticed the alarmed reaction that news got, and my procedure was delayed nearly an hour while they gave me an IV and monitored my sugar level. I mentioned this to my Endo next visit, and I’m told they have since revised the written instructions.
Fortunately, I apparently have a pretty high tolerance for low blood sugar, since I recall driving to work at 5 am many times after testing at 32 (after eating something sweet, of course). I’m glad to be on the OmniPod 5 now, and retired.
I was recently in the ER (unrelated to colonoscopes) and was fingerstuck every hour by a nurse once i showed them my pump and Dexcom. They brought me sandwiches, apple juice containers and Grahm Crackers. I felt safe an cared for and confident in my health team.
But then, i had to return to a different ER for an MRI (the first ER did not have the machine), and they seeemed to care less about me or my D. They did not come round even once to check my sugars. I requested a sandwich, juice and crackers and never got them. Totally incompetent.
Once, right before the anesthisiologist was about to put me out, i had to explain to him what my pump was and how it worked and that it could be removed easily from outside my tummy should i begin to go low during my surgery. He looked utterly confused.
You are very blessed. What great fortune An Aside: my first endo that i started with was a T1D and wore a pump. He was a complete idiot. He didnt even believe in Diabetic Neuropathy. The DP and FOTF amused him as if it were make believe. I stayed with him as long as i could take it (he did give out endless free smaples of insulin, though) , then once i joined FUD, my confidence grew and i left him ASAP and never regretted a minute of it.
As the late, great George Carlin astutely observed (in words or substance): It’s a mathematical imperative that some doctor out there is the absolute worst one there is, and some poor shnook has an appointment to see him tomorrow morning at 9 am.
Soooooo … 3+ years after the last post in this thread, I would like to thank each and every person who posted here. I am a T1D of +39 years, and about to go through my first colonoscopy. My Kaiser NorCal doctors gave me what sounds (based on what I read here) to be mostly good advice … excluding the “no insulin on the day” thing from one out of the 3 lists that I got. I mean … really??? “No insulin on the day” is very bad advice, and luckily I’m experienced enough to go “oh, hell no!”
When I called to make the appointment (after getting our toilet fixed, which was clearly a priority), the lady on the other end started talking about drinking a huge amout of liquid in a short amount of time, and I said “But, that will almost certainly drop my blood sugar by a significant amount! How can I do this procedure safely?” … Silence … then, she suggested speaking to my Primary Care physician. I replied that PCs usually don’t know enough about detailed, daily diabetes management to give practical advice on this kind of stuff, and my chronic condition management person was a doctor of pharmacology, not a Gastroenterology specialist. (I had learned my lesson dealing with perimenopause. Which was an “ask your endo … no? … ask your gyn” but no one had done any real research on perimenopause in T1Ds then, because we didn’t used to get this old, so no one had practical advice for me.) So, then she put me on hold. When she came back, she asked if I wanted to make an appointment to speak with the doctor about the entire process. I am cheered that this was the response.
Thanks to all of the first hand experiences that I read about here, I have better questions to ask at my appointment next week to discuss the prep and procedure with a doctor from the department. And I am soooooo glad that I have a pump and cgm!!!
Thanks very much for your response, I really do appreciate your support. However, I have had this happen to me in the past when I drank a lot of liquid. It depends on circumstances. When you are dehydrated, and drink a lot of water, it can lower your blood sugar if you don’t have enough carbs in your system. It doesn’t reduce the actual amount of carbs in your system, but it reduces the ratio of carbs versus liquid in your blood stream, which effectively drops your BG. I was worried that a dramatic increase of liquid, paired with emptying out my insides as part of the prep might do something similar.
Some of the people in this thread had their BG drop at some point during the prep for this procedure, so it’s helpful to know where the pitfalls might be. My sister (not a T1D), had trouble with the liquid that she had to drink making her nauseous, so I am concerned about that, as well.
The problem is not the prep; I’m still waiting for my instructions for my next anal probe (a few weeks time) but IRC from my last (10 years ago) I was told to take between 32oz (US, 2 pints) and 64oz (US, 4 pints, UK 3 pints) of water. That’s not an unusual amount of water to drink in a few hours (based on UK beer drinking).
Rather the problem is the preceding 24 hours; it helps to understand what the end is. The docs want to look up and not have their view obstructed by anything to the start of our colon. In time terms our colon is the last 10-72 hours (based on several Google AI searches and using the outer limits) but, the sticky point, our upper gut above that can squirt stuff in for up to 10 hours (based on the AI).
So the “24 hour liquid diet” is the killer for us; the docs need us to stop eating 24 hours before the probe. The “liquid diet”.
For many diabetics that causes a problem because the basal covers some of the carbs - so 24 hours without carbs is a no-no.
IMO a good way of approaching this is to do a “trial” 24 hours with no solids; certainly not no carbs, have glucose tabs on hand! That allows us to work out how our very own diet works; if you flatline with no carbs then you are on a roll and can do this any day. Most likely you won’t unless you proactively adjust the basal (assuming you aren’t using an AIDS, which does that itself).
In any case the docs will work with you; it’s not carbs that case the problem, it’s the food coloring. So they should be fine with pure sucrose (refined white sugar) or glucose (the tablets with absolutely no additives, but they are difficult to find). IRC that’s what they said to me 10 years ago.
Anyway, sounds like we will be doing the same procedure in the same month. It’s your first time but I loved the more detailed understanding I had of bilirubin after the prep, before the probe. I sort of knew that from the limited biology I did but there’s nothing like seeing it alone.
THANKS!!! That’s very helpful - another piece of a very complicated information-puzzle.
One piece of advice from all 3 lists from my doctor (3 links to slightly different pre-procedure descriptions) was to keep glucose tablets on hand … but to keep away from orange, red, and purple colorings … … as if it’s possible to get glucose tabs that are not orange, pink, or purple without ridiculous amounts of effort. Anyway, I’m not interested in going to that much trouble. I got raw/unrefined sugar in little packets (because you can keep track by counting the little empty packets × 4 or 5 grams each … did I mention my bad life-long short-term memory?).
Get refined sugar. Raw sugar contains unspecified coloring components which may interfere with the colonoscopy.
The pure dextrose (a variety of glucose) tablets used to be available but you are correct, finding them is difficult. Refined white sugar is a lot easier and is just as effective for non-emergency BG control.
So far as I know colonoscopies are still performed under anaesthetic; mine will be. IRC the anaesthetist monitors BG and the docs can easily, trivially, correct low BG by adding glucose to the drip (I was on a drip, I assume everyone is). It’s not low BG which is the big deal here once you get into the OR, it might be high BG but that’s not normally a problem for controlled diabetics. I.e. we might have a BG in the massive-numbers but it won’t kill us.
The horror stories from 20 years ago were diabetics who got a saline drip with glucose in it. I don’t think that happens any more, quite possibly the people who reported it were reporting from 50 years ago! (We live longer these days
Thanks! I was thinking afterwards that I should check on that - it’s brown and, dyed or not, that might be a problem.
And, yes, living longer means that doctors don’t necessarily know what to do with us. It’s worrying. I’m glad that I didn’t die at 21 (DKA with BG of 998 mg/dL in 1986), but it’s complicated!
An Aside: my first endo that i started with was a T1D and wore a pump. He was a complete idiot. He didnt even believe in Diabetic Neuropathy. The DP and FOTF amused him as if it were make believe. I stayed with him as long as i could take it (he did give out endless free smaples of insulin, though) , then once i joined FUD, my confidence grew and i left him ASAP and never regretted a minute of it.
However, I have had this happen to me in the past when I drank a lot of liquid. It depends on circumstances. When you are dehydrated, and drink a lot of water, it can lower your blood sugar if you don’t have enough carbs in your system. It doesn’t reduce the actual amount of carbs in your system, but it reduces the ratio of carbs versus liquid in your blood stream, which effectively drops your BG. I was worried that a dramatic increase of liquid, paired with emptying out my insides as part of the prep might do something similar.
… as if it’s possible to get glucose tabs that are not orange, pink, or purple without ridiculous amounts of effort. Anyway, I’m not interested in going to that much trouble. I got raw/unrefined sugar in little packets (because you can keep track by counting the little empty packets × 4 or 5 grams each … did I mention my bad life-long short-term memory?).
