Scopes from the eyes of my 12 year old…

If you’ve been keeping up with my blog, you know that my daughter, Skyler, was scheduled to have an upper EGD and a colonoscopy early September before schools started back up.  Our new pediatric GI recommended0 scoping around the first 10 years of life for kids at risk for FAP.

Below is her thoughts on the experience (mine to follow):

My experience of having a colonoscopy and upper scope kind of went by in a blur.  The prepping I remember quite well though and it wasn’t much fun.  But even though I didn’t have fun fasting on clear liquids for more than 24 hours, it wasn’t too bad.  I had two of my closest friends over to keep me company.  The worst part was drinking 30 oz of the magnesium citrate liquid because it tasted so bad.  You don’t start to feel hungry until 4 or 5 pm.  By the next day, you aren’t hungry.  Just kind of tired and cold.

At the hospital, a lot of people came in and asked me if I had any questions and every time I said no, because my dad already explained everything to me and he also asked me if I had any questions a lot.  Then when they finally took me into the room where the procedure would take place, they put drugs in me and all of a sudden, it was over just like that.

Waking was kind of like waking up from the best sleep ever.  I was pretty out of it and my first instinct was to go back to sleep because I was so groggy.  But then I started to wake up more and more and I no longer wanted to curl back into a ball and sleep forever.

The results were also motivating because they found that I had no polyps and wouldn’t have to come back until I was about 15.

Beforehand, a lot of people were asking me if I was scared at all and whenever I said “not really”, people told me how brave I was.  I would just shrug my shoulders.  I think the reason I wasn’t nervous was because I knew that the reason  I was doing this was to help prevent worse things from happening.  I believe that the reason other kids might be scared is because they see this as someone telling them that they might have cancer and then in their mind they may think of how cancer often relates to death.  So all those kids out there going through this, I say a great way to stay strong is to look at this and see themselves as beating this whether it turns out to be in your genes or not!

My thoughts (from the dad):

As I discussed in my previous blog, I was pretty apprehensive about the possible results.  My kids have always been an unknown since my diagnosis and now we would actually get some results.  I’ve always sort of just felt that they would not get the defect and therefore would not inherit FAP from me.  But I have no basis for this, just wishful thinking or maybe it’s how I manage to get by without too much stress.

Well, I handled the whole thing pretty well because she was a real trooper.  So many nurses came up to her before the procedure asking her if she knew what was going to happen to her and if she had any questions.  She was like “no, I’m good” with a smile, my dad has this done all the time and he has asked me a lot if I have any questions.  She was so strong, I was very impressed and proud.  I felt relieved to see how brave she was.  Braver then me I think.

What kind of surprised me was the feelings that built up when they wheeled her back behind closed doors.  I started to feel uncertain, I started to stress and I started to even get mad but I couldn’t tell who I was mad at or why.  It was not a feeling I had experienced before in that way.  Luckily it was over soon and the doctor gave us the good news that no polyps were found and she had a clean bill of health.  What a freaking relief!

So what does this mean?  It means she does not currently show polyps so we just need to scope again in a few years, probably 3.  If she continues to not show any polyps into her early 20’s then we will start to feel comfortable she does not have FAP.  For now, we’ll take the clean bill of health and run with it.  It’s such a huge relief we aren’t dealing with anything more serious at this point.