 Good morning, John. This video is going to have frank discussions and also joking about health and the human body, just so you know. So I have ulcerative colitis. It is a chronic disease, incurable, as so far anyway, where your immune system is like, this colon looks terrible. I need to hurt it. I don't know why. No one does. It sucks. It causes diarrhea and bleeding and pain when severe fatigue, weight loss, eventual death. When it gets that bad, we have a cure for it, where they take your colon out, but that also comes with its own difficulties. I'm a big fan of my colon. Look, it's not its fault my immune system is attacking it. Ulcerative colitis also increases your chances of colon cancer and a bunch of other nasty diseases. So it's important to keep an eye on the colon. And by eye, I mean endoscope. And by endoscope, I mean a big, long, weird tube with a camera on the end of it and a flashlight and a thing that pumps air out so your colon inflates and a little water gun so it can shoot at stuff and also a laser sometimes so it can cauterize wounds and a little clippy thing to snip off polyps and do biopsies. It's a pretty cool tube. How much does an endoscope cost? Well, I can't figure out how much a colonoscope costs, but it does have a section in the key benefits that says smoother and more comfortable insertion. So I hope they've got that one in my hospital. Anyway, I've gotten a bunch of colonoscopies over the years. I think this is maybe my third or fourth. The fact that I can't remember might indicate that for me it's not that big of a deal anymore. But with luck, everybody gets to have several colonoscopies. So let's talk about it. Even if you're not planning on getting one, just knowing before your doctor brings it up, not a bad thing. So the thing to understand about the entire process of a colonoscopies, they want your colon to be real clean. And generally, it's not like, I don't think I need to explain that. That's why for like a week beforehand you shouldn't have any nuts, you shouldn't have corn, you shouldn't have anything with seeds like a sesame seed bun or raspberries. Those things stick around, they can get lodged in places and the doctor sees them and they're like, what's that? And then they use their water gun and if it doesn't move then they're like, something is weird and I'm worried about it. But then it's like, I was a sesame seed the whole time. The doctor is your friend, you want to make life easy for them, don't eat a bunch of nuts. That water gun is adorable and everything, but like, sometimes that sesame seed is just real stuck there. But that is step number one. Step number two is the horrible gas can of misery. I don't know why they can't put this thing in a better container. It seems very industrial. But the copay was zero dollars. My main tip here, put it in the fridge the night before. It needs to be in the fridge for at least 12 hours. You do not want to drink this stuff warm. If you start to get a little vomit, which happens, I like to have a little sip of coke just like a little sip, reboot my palate. You can have coke or clear liquids or green liquids. You can't have red liquids the day before the colonoscopy because that looks like blood. You don't want any maybes when it comes to blood during the colonoscopy. You can also take a Benadryl that can help chill the vomit. In addition to not drinking red stuff, you also can't eat anything the day before the procedure. I'm currently in that day. It's the beginning of it. I will be useless by the end. But right now, the stuff that they put in this can, you like fill with warm water and shake it up and then you put it in the fridge. That stuff is going to make you feel a little bit like a rocket on a launch pad. Except it's not like combusted rocket fuel coming out of you. So if that's what it feels like, you did it right. This is a day in which you're going to poop a lot. You might want to get some baby wipes, some A&D ointment. You figure out how to use those things yourself, I'm not going to explain it. Ideally, you could take a good portion of the day off before your colonoscopy because you're taking this prep and you're not eating food and so you're not a ton of fun to be around. I like to use this day to do stuff that I wouldn't otherwise do. Like work on a cool new project that I haven't thought about or watch Star Trek the next generation a lot. There's something I love doing that is not going to have any annoyance in it because it's a short trigger. You'll often hear people say that the prep for a colonoscopy is hell. I've found it, it's like it's not fun, but like in comparison to the procedure, it's bad because the procedure these days is very like nothing. You go to bed, they give you propa fall. You can also ask to be awake during the colonoscopy if that's your bag, but they won't bring that option up on their own. More than half of colonoscopies result in a biopsy being taken or a polyp being removed. That's not weird, so if you wake up and find out that happened, that's not like panic time, that's normal. A vast majority of polyps are non-cancerous, but if you do have cancerous or pre-cancerous growths, this is why you did it. 100% of colonoscopies end in massive farts. They inflate your whole colon so that they can look around in there. So yeah, let it go. I am one with the wind in the sky. After the colonoscopy, you will want someone to drive you home, and so will the doctors. I mean, they will not let you drive yourself home because you will be on drugs. Propa fall, which is the drug that is mostly used for anesthetics now, wears off fairly quickly, but you probably should consider that day a wash as well. You might want to watch more Star Trek. You might not remember what happened. And if you notice anything weird, they'll talk to you about this, but like talk to your doctor if things seem off after the procedure. And now, without further ado, let's walk through the process as I experience it. It's time to take my first drink of the drink. It's like a gamma stuff. You would drink it in two sittings, two hours long each. Oh yeah, just make the gluggy noise. That's great. Now I get to set a timer and see how long it takes for something to go through my whole body. It's about 30 feet. It's not as bad as it used to be, honestly. It takes about an hour for that stuff to go all the way through you, which seems fast, but it is only 0.0056 miles per hour. So it's pretty slow, honestly. Okay, it's been a long time since I've eaten food, but I'm up. It's time to go to the hospital. Kitty, can you wish me a good time? Give a kiss. I did a surprising amount of online shopping, which may just be because I'm not making good decisions. I bought a bunch of shirts, Catherine. If there was any one place in the world where it wouldn't have terrible, hard, awful toilet paper, it would be the endoscopy clinic. But yet I got my IV on, about to go do the thing. I'm a little nervous as to be expected. People are all very nice. So we're doing this thing. My doctor was Aaron Stone. He could have studied stone. Kidney stones, geology, other rocks. He most used the extra smooth insertion ones from Olympus. How are you feeling? Okay. And now I'm here editing my video on Friday, the day of my colonoscopy. Was it too much? Too much information? I think at the very least it's educational, and in a way that will hopefully lead to more people screening themselves for colon cancer, because it's a serious thing. So that's why this video is longer than four minutes. If you're headed in for your colonoscopy, if you're doing your prep right now, I hope everything comes out okay. John, I'll see you on Tuesday.