Enema Dye Study

[DanM]

I am about 2-3 weeks from my ostomy reversal... YEA! I know they will ask me during rounds if I have passed gas. I can't wait to ask the med students to pull my finger.

The doctor wants me to have an enema dye study to see how my colon is healing. All I know is that they are going to shove a tube up my butt and inject me with a contrast agent so they can do x-rays of my colon. He also hopes some of the dye will come out the other end of my loop illiostomy.

I was wondering who has had one and what was the experience like? How long did it take? Do I need to have someone drive me home afterwards? Should I ask the doctor to buy me a drink first or mention that violating me like that may be considered a marriage proposal in some parts of the country?

Dan

 

[CDDad]

Hey Dan,
Sorry no advice, but I'm chuckling. Sometimes that's just the attitude needed to deal with this stuff.

Good luck!

 

[DanM]

During pre-op for the last surgery they asked me if I had any open wounds, so I kept telling them about the paper cut on my thumb and I kept calling the anesthesiologist the gas passer. Humor was unfortunately lost on them.

Dan

 

[partlycloudy]

I had one prior to having my ileostomy taken down. I actually had a piece of leftover stool blocking the passage so they couldn't really get the dye in, however, my memory of it is it was just like an enema.

Having said that, it probably depends on where your resection reconnection (hey, that'd make a good song) is. Mine was only about 5 inches in from my anus (oooo, I said anus to a man I don't know!) so they didn't have to put a lot in nor go in very far.

The bad part of the fact that they really couldn't get the dye in well enough was the doc decided to look in manually with some kind of flexible scope. Again, he didn't need to go in very far but to put it bluntly, it hurt like hell. I could have used some Versed for that.

Edited to say I had contrast dye inserted into my colon twice while in the hospital a couple of years ago. I was in the ER both times for what I now know were bad flares. The dye w/ xray was part of the diagnostic process. If what you're having is anything like that then you have nothing to worry about. It was slightly uncomfortable like an enema and that's it. No pain at all.