As the day of my procedure was approaching I started to feel nervous. Scheduled for a Friday, I had to take that Thursday off from my internship for prep and also Friday off from work. I went out Wednesday night to buy everything I needed for prep and didn't realize how embarrassed I would feel until I was handing the cashier a box of Dulcolax and two bottles of magnesium citrate. I was imagining the cashier thinking "what the hell does she have stuck inside her?!". After all, it was enough laxative for an entire family.
When I woke up Thursday morning I took four Dulcolax tablets as instructed and prepared myself for a day of fasting. Since I took the day off from my internship, I decided to head to the office and get some work done since it is only 5 minutes down the road. By 10am I was already feeling frustrated that I couldn't eat and began drinking water in attempts to curb my hunger. By 11am I had eaten all of the lifesaver candy (with the exception of the red) in the candy bowl at work. I realized after the third yellow lifesaver that I prefer the red when it comes down to choosing a color of candy... for example, the red starburst, skittles, and sour patch kids are always the best... O.K. maybe the pink starburst is the best, but you get what I'm saying. When fasting for my double procedure I could not have anything with red dye in it... which meant no red lifesavers. By the time 2 o'clock came I was suddenly having terrible pains in my stomach and knew it was time for me to go home.
I got home and decided to boil water with a chicken bouillon cube in attempts to trick my brain into thinking I was actually eating something that would fill me, and of course because I was starving and at least wanted to taste food.
Hungry and grumpy I spent the day on the couch. Thankfully I had my sister to go out and get me some jolly ranchers and ice pops since the bouillon cubes, iced tea, and water got to be really boring by dinner time.
I do not need to go into detail about the rest of the day/night as we all know what laxatives do. I will say that I was absolutely miserable not being able to eat and I think that was the worst part of this whole experience. Well... drinking the magnesium citrate was also quite awful. I really didn't expect the bottles to be 10 ounces each, for some reason I imagined a smaller bottle. I drank the first one at 6pm, with my sister there to encourage me I managed to drink the entire bottle rather quickly. I decided to put it in a glass so it would be easier to chug, and then decided that using a straw was my best bet. I had to drink the other bottle at midnight so I decided to just stay up. When the time came I dreaded the taste of the sour, tart, acidy, lemon laxative and reluctantly stuck my straw in the bottle and reminded myself that it was mind over matter. Half way through I wondered if I would be fine with what I had already drank and considered pouring the rest down the drain... I glanced at my instructions from the doctor which clearly state "drink the entire bottle", since entire was underlined I figured it must be pretty important and went back to my straw. I ended up with a terrible headache that night and could not wait to go to bed knowing that tomorrow it would be all over before I knew it. I sucked down the rest of the bottle and to be honest by the end, I was really starting to feel as if I was going to throw up from the taste. This will all be over tomorrow.
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