More Comments From the ABV Crowd

I found the following comments here;   Why are colonoscopy doctors so anxious to insist on sedation (read: date-rape drugs, commonly Versed?)

Here is one answer to the question..."Try having something jammed up your colon when you're awake."  What a comforting description of a colonoscopy.  Having something JAMMED up your colon.  Is this really what they do?  JAM things up there?  Sort of like a previous comment here about having the LMA device JAMMED down your throat.  Additionally, with Versed you ARE AWAKE!  You are awake and experiencing all that pain, regardless of whether you remember it or not.  Barbaric is what this is. 

There is another one, but it's too long for me to want to reproduce it here, but I have an excerpt!  "So I have had and observed colonoscopies (I am a nurse.)  You ask why doctors "are so anxious" to insist on IV sedation:  it lessens the risk of complications, and increases patient comfort, with very little additional risk."  The first thing to pay attention to is the source of the comment...a nurse.   Secondly sedation does NOT lessen the risk of complications as proven by the commenter's SAME STATEMENT!  I can't make this stuff up folks.  Look at the "lessens the risk" in the first part of the statement and then look at the last phrase of the same sentence "very little additional risk."  So which is it?  Does it "LESSEN the risk" or does it entail "ADDITIONAL risk"?

You are much more likely to be PERFORATED while sedated.  I have come across zero literature that states that non sedated patients are ever perforated.  I'm sure there may be, but so far ALL risk of perforation is because of sedation.  I call that a complication.  How exactly then does sedation "lessen the risk of complications"?  What complications does this nurse refer to?

How does she figure that "sedation" increases patient comfort"?  Versed is an ANTI-anesthetic.  That means that you feel the pain more acutely with this drug on board.  Is she talking about the "comfort" of having amnesia thereby allowing your medical team to dismiss your agony?  I don't find that comforting at all.  Even if *I* had gotten amnesia, which I didn't, it still doesn't comfort me to know that I am going to be tortured by having a tube JAMMED up my colon, and am only going to have sketchy/no recall of the event.  That's NOT patient comfort.  Pain control, not sedation/amnesia is what *I* call patient comfort.  Do you know why "screening" colonoscopy is called "screaming" colonoscopy by health care workers? Let's see, oh yeah, it's because of patient "comfort".  (heavy sarcasm)

As far as I'm concerned ADDITIONAL RISK, no matter how little this nurse claims, isn't a viable choice for me, especially for a SCREENING procedure!  Are you kidding me?  Risking serious stuff like peritonitis from a perforation, removal of bowel sections, colostomy bags etc. as a result of a TEST? 

I'm not even talking about the detrimental effects of the drug itself, the insomnia, rage, irritability, forgetfulness, emotional instability, PTSD and all the rest of the "side" effects of Versed itself, just the very real physical risk associated with the "sedation' drug Versed as used for colonoscopies! 

The rest of the nurse's comment is enlightening as well.  You should go read it.  She completely OMITS Versed as the (partial?) cause of Michael Jackson's death.  It's uncanny...