Hi Ginny: I don't even know why doctors are ordering sigmoidoscopies anymore, especially when investigating bleeding. They are so incomplete-they only go up a portion of your colon. Bleeding could by coming from higher up. (I realize that when it gets really high up it becomes occult, unless you have a lot of it.) I think colonoscopy is the way to go. They sedate you for that. Apparently when I had mine it was very painful because the doc siad I was "letting them know" it was painful (I'm still wondering just how I did that) so they slipped me some more demerol and versed and I was out. Normally you are under what is called "conscious sedation" and are able to repond to them, but pain and awareness is diminished. My husband had one and he said it was like being given a guided tour of your colon (you watch on a monitor) with a funny, detached feeling. This is what I expected. Anyway, I was wondering like you if the adhesions which fixed the sigmoid colon was responsible for this pain. (of course, I didn't know about the adhesions yet so couldn't ask him this) At the second lap when they took down some adhesions they found out my sigmoid colon was pulled all the way over and stuck to the right pelvic wall. I wonder if this is the explanation for the pain-should he have gone to the right side of my body before going left? And shouldn't he have known that when he encountered resistance? Well, the colo-rectal guy said no, you get a very limited perspective in there. I'm more and more convinced that a colo-rectal specialist is the one to go to, instead of a GI doc, at least for the initial workup, when the colon is involved.
Chris S.
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