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Comment by unsupp0rted | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been having colonoscopies since my mid-20s. It’s only a mild inconvenience to do it every 1~n years. There are risks that come with sedation, of course, and a non-zero risk of perforation.

But overall it’s barely a blip on my radar compared to what a cancer patient goes through.

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I had it once, and I wouldn't call it a "mild inconvenience". It was basically two days for me, one to sit at home dealing with the laxatives, and another recovering from the sedation.

It wasn't excruciating, and it's sure as hell better than cancer. But I'm glad I don't need to do it again for another decade.

I have one pretty much yearly. You have to make sure not to eat the wrong things (like seeds, nuts) several days before and then the day before eat very light food and stop around noon. Then take the laxatives in the evening and again the next day about 4 hours ahead of your procedure. The worst part to me in all of this is really drinking that cup of laxatives. The sedation (for me) has always been dosed well enough that I feel fine within 30-60 minutes after waking up. Although you can't operate a car or other machinery for the rest of the day. But I also don't have to work on those days, so it's a relaxing day to me.

You can actually schedule it so that you simply pull an all-nighter while taking the laxatives. That way you'll be cleared out by the time of the colonoscopy but only really just spend 1 day dealing with the colonoscopy prep and procedure. (You'll still easily want to sleep normally after)

The prep isn't too fun, but yeah, one day of clear liquids is infinitely more bearable than three rounds of chemo would be. And the risks from sedation/bleeding/etc. have to be far lower than the risks of excision surgery or -ectomy for advanced cancer.

You've got to multiply that with the probabilities in various somewhat complicated ways, but a simple approximation is to multiply the probability of death by a certain kind of cancer by the expected loss of dying of that cancer at the expected age to die from that cancer. Yes, it's subjective. No, that's not fixable, and in my opinion it's not a problem.

Well, you hope you don't feel anything... Are they using propofol alone? Has more research been done on how good of a painkiller it is vs a memory eraser?

You just pass out on the table and wake up in a bed something like 40 minutes later. I could remember everything up to feeling the effects of the anesthetic and beginning to pass out, but nothing thereafter.

I also received lidocaine, and felt rather great afterwards for the next few hours.

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