The Oral Fleet - It ain't so neat

I've had enough of these salty piss beverages to last a lifetime. I don't care if it cleans out every nook and cranny of my bowels leaving them with a photogenic gleam. I don't care if it facilitates the diagnostic process. Some day someone with some spare time and a righteous attitude should take the medical community to task on why they subject patients to this utter oral hell.

I recently had an ileoscopy. Before my GI had even completed the sentence suggesting I should have one, I was in full self-protection mode, ready to go to battle to ensure an oral fleet was not in my future. Fortunately, he understood the look of total abhorrence on my face when I asked if what kind of prep he wanted for the scope, and said not to worry about it and that he could clean me out when I was under.

Although I have never investigated this fully, I have the feeling that the oral fleet is not always necessary and more of a hellish-prep-at-the-expense-of-patients in order to make doctors' lives a little more efficient. After my ileostomy surgery, I laid down the law on this bullshit. There would be NO MORE oral fleets fleeting down the throat of one miss mypinkbutton. ever.

One time I was getting prepped for a resection. I was very happy that I had a naso-gastric tube in at the time. I'd been in this situation once before, and it allowed me to slowly but surely shoot the fleet through the tube and into my stomach using a big ol' syringe. Bypassing my taste buds like that sure made me feel lucky, although it was no picnic as I still felt the raunchiness rising up the back of my throat with the accompanying nausea. Anyway, so I had the tube in again, and the nurse on duty that night had never heard of anyone shooting the oral fleet into their naso-gastric tube. It was a very busy night for her and she was skeptical about my plan; it was almost as if she felt it just wouldn't work if a patient didn't experience the displeasure of having the fleet pass over their taste buds. She decided she couldn't let me do it myself, and so she very hurriedly pushed the entire load of oral fleet into my tube all in a matter of two or three minutes. It was too much, too fast. My body couldn't take it. I wretched the whole load up in repeated convulsions. The most disgusting part of this is that the barfing was involuntary and so I was forced to taste long streams of oral fleet barf as it past over the length of my tongue.

The next time I had to have the fleet was in preparation for my ileostomy surgery. A few hours after having taken it, my surgeon came into the hospital room to talk before the operation. He had a look at my fistula, which had formed between my intestines and the skin of abdomen, and saw that it had stopped leaking- an indication that I would be okay, at least for a time, without the ileostomy. He actually had the nerve to say, "are you sure you really want to go ahead with the surgery?"

What the fuck?! Can you imagine what was going through my head? After fighting against the operation for weeks, telling all the doctors I didn't want one, and having them tell me I didn't have a choice?! After all the mental and emotional preparation I had to undergo to prepare myself for the surgery, I was now being given an out?

But in all honesty, that's not what was going through my head. In that very moment after he asked, all I could think was good fucking god - but I already had the oral fleet! ...and so, I said yes, and I went ahead with the surgery.