I thought the worst thing about my colonoscopy would be the prep and absence of coffee this morning. I wasn't a bit worried about the procedure itself. As I told the doctor just before he started, why would I be nervous? I'm going to be asleep. Once we got to the OR, I joked that a friend had mentioned something about doctors waking up their patients at the end to let them see the view through the scope. I made it clear that I wanted no part of that. "Do it and wake me when it's over," I said. So the nurse started injecting meds into my IV. "Are you sleepy yet?" she asked. I wasn't. She gave me some more. I still didn't go to sleep and the doctor had started. The nurse asked if she could give me more of the sedation drug. The doctor said that was fine. And so it went through the entire procedure. The anesthesia simply didn't work. I was awake for the whole thing, including the removal of several polyps. It hurt!
The doctor said that had happened only once before in his career, and that the amount of medication they had given me was the most they were allowed to. According to my report, from which I'm reading right now, I was given 125 mcgs of Fentanyl, 6.25 mgs of Promethazine-Phergan, and 10 mgs of Versed. (I'm not sure whether that reflects the actual amount used or the intended amount, now that I think about it.) I have no idea whether that's a lot, but it apparently wasn't enough. On the plus side, my results were normal and I don't have to do this again for ten years. By then I'll probably have forgotten all about the anesthesia issue, and it will happen all over again. I hope they keep good records.
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