Nuts and seeds

[Catrin]

Hope you're feeling better now. That does sound like a pretty strong reaction to a 40-mile bike ride. You ate appropriately with good nutritionally dense foods and enough carbs to follow up the level of effort. Hang in there!

[ny biker]

Thanks. I've been drinking as much sugar as I can. Very soon I expect to be...indisposed for a long while. So naturally my downstairs neighbor just decided to fire up the grill and cook meat for dinner. The grill is directly under my bathroom window and exhaust fan vent. My bathroom now reeks of smoke and meat. This is the absolute worst possible thing right now.

(Really wishing I had called the fire department and reported the illegal placement of that grill last summer. It's right next to the building, inches away.)

[emily_in_nc]

Aw man, NY, just what you don't need!

I hope you'll start feeling better soon. As I posted before, I was very hungry near the beginning of my prep, but as time went on, my appetite when to absolute zero. It was strange; just like a switch turned off. Hope you experience the same and that your procedure goes smoothly.

[ny biker]

Thanks Emily. I moved the air purifier from the kitchen to the bathroom, turned it on high and closed the door. The room is so small that the grill odors were gone quickly.

I was very worried that there would be bad abdominal cramps from the laxative (Suprep). A friend who goes through this every 3 years had given me the impression that I would be suffering mightily after drinking it. Fortunately this did not happen! It tasted awful, and I thought my stomach would explode from drinking the 16 oz. mixture followed by 32 oz. of a clear liquid. For the first dose I started off the 32 oz. chaser by drinking ginger ale because I thought the bubbles would help, but I think they actually made it worse. I switched to Gatorade which was easier to drink. So after the second Suprep dose (at 5 am -- too early for any food or drink, in my book) I drank all Gatorade. As soon as I could I followed that up with Italian ices, the remaining jello and some juice to get as many calories as possible before I had to completely stop the clear liquids for four hours. Nonetheless I was very hungry for most of those four hours and could barely remember my date of birth by the time I got to the hospital.

The anesthesia was great -- I closed my eyes, went out right away and the next thing I knew it was all over. I was a little lightheaded at first when I got to recovery but that wore off quickly, especially after I had some ginger ale and crackers. I felt fine when I got home, just a little tired. Around midnight I fell asleep in the chair in the living room, woke up a half hour later and realized I had edema in my legs and feet. Overnight that improved but I'm still overall bloated with excess water. For about a week now I've been having a hormone swing with water retention plus a flare up of the chronic hives. I think that ingesting so much sugary liquid and salty chicken broth for more than 24 hours followed by the dehydrating effect of the Suprep made all of that worse. I have no idea what to do about it. Every pair of pants I own is too tight right now, barely wearable. I'm already taking antihistamines twice a day and I've gone back on Zantac (also a histamine inhibitor) which is how I treat the hives. I'm wearing the tightest compression socks I own. I'm trying to avoid salty foods and too many carbs. So far none of this is working. A nurse from the gastroenterology place called me today to follow up and I told her about the edema, but she said that she'd never heard of that as a problem after a colonoscopy -- most people are dehydrated afterwards. I would love to be dehydrated right now.

Oh and they found a polyp so I have to go back in 5 years. Yay.

The day before the clear liquid diet I had been in a bookstore getting some Christmas presents, and while I was there I realized I could probably use a really good book to occupy my mind and keep me from thinking about how hungry I was. I watched the first Hunger Games movie recently and thought it was interesting, and I have a niece who had really liked the books when they first came out. So I bought all three books. I read the first one in less than 24 hours -- it definitely helped pass the time. Now I'm reading the second book. I haven't seen any of the other movies so it's all new to me at this point. (Yes there is some irony in this -- there is much discussion of food throughout the first book! But it still helped keep me from thinking about all the food in my kitchen that I was not allowed to eat.)

[emily_in_nc]

Wow, sounds like you had a pretty bad experience, NY. I don't remember much about "after" my colonoscopy, just that I got the day off work and napped in the afternoon (lovely). Can't remember any strange after-effects at all. I was lucky they didn't find anything, so I'm on the 10 year plan (my DH has had polyps twice so is on the five-year schedule).

On the positive side, I recently finished reading the Hunger Games trilogy and loved it. I have not had the chance to see any of the movies. The first book was my fave, but I liked the other two as well.

Hope you're all back to normal and un-swollen very soon!

[Crankin]

As someone who has had all kinds of weird side effects/allergies/hives, it's very frustrating, because most of the time no one believes you. While I had no issues after my colonoscopy (I never was all the way out, just felt no pain and I actually watched it on the monitor) and came home and ate Indian food and rode my bike the next day, I have avoided other medical procedures because of this. I would strongly suspect there might be a preservative in the IV solution you had, in addition to the salt/sugar thing. I had a horrible reaction to IV contrast dye, even after I told the tech I didn't want it during a CT scan, because my mom was allergic to it and I am also allergic to most shellfish, which is pretty much the same thing (iodine).
NY, I would seriously try to find out what chemicals and preservatives were in all the medicines and "drinks" you took.