Colonoscopy & Endoscopy

My 7 year old will be going under a GA to have a colonoscopy & endoscopy done within the next 4-8 weeks (hopefully) and I'm wondering if anyone has any advice/tips on how to get through the preparations for it. The actual surgery bit is fine (we've had a few surgeries now) it's just the few days leading up to it with the yucky drink (hopefully not yucky for kids?) etc.

I'm planning on having someone else have my younger boy for the 1-2 days prior as well as the day of and the day after so that all my attention can be on DS1. Fasting for a surgery is hard enough without a clearout of the bowels as well lol.

Thanks.

Honestly the drink is horrible :( I hope it's better for kids but actually making him drink it may be hard, use ice cold water when mixing, Vaseline his bottom after wiping each time as it's burns, gentle baby wipes would be good too.

Thanks, hopefully it's not as horrible for kids :s

Oh and stay on the loo or very close to it, have a tablet or TV to watch whilst he's on there

I used to work at the kids bossy doing endo and colonoscopies and I'm pretty sure they didn't make the kids drink that stuff. They may possibly have had a clear liquid diet...maybe, but pretty sure no on the gross drink. Just give the hospital a ring or your doc and ask for a heads up on the prep.

Thanks Kim, the gastroenterologist we saw did say he will have the drink, but I'll wait and see I guess :) Once we have a date I'll follow up on it more. Fingers crossed on no drink :D

I've not heard of kids having the drink before either. But if they want a full clean out, ask for the tablets instead of the drink. A little easier to convince him to have it.

We also suggest to adults to put a bit of lemon cordial with it. Any cordial is fine so long as it isn't red or green.

Awesome, thanks :)

Plenty of things to do while on the toilet ...

Showers ...

Belly rubs ...

Air freshener ...

Hugs!

Thanks :)

Already have air fresheners in there as his poo is really really bad lol

Just thought I'd update :) He had the procedure on Wednesday and the prep is terrible. The PicoPrep isn't so bad, it's a fairly mild lemon flavour but the Colonlytely is vile. He only needed about 1/4 a cup but it was such a strong lemon flavour it took him over an hour to sip it down. We couldn't even mask the terrible flavour with cordial :( It was quite difficult to get him to actually drink them too, because they gave him a tummy ache (which I expected) he kept refusing to drink it. Hopefully we never have to go through any of that again. The actual procedure itself went really well though.