jingjai wrote:You must've missed it. I explained the costs two posts above yours. Don't worry Stan, we understand, must've been a rough night.BKKSTAN wrote:jingjai,what was your cost for the treatment at BUM?
Thanks ,I definitely missed it!Today is my 70th birthday,so maybe age set in quicker than I noticed! that's easy, just go to BH, ask info where dermatology/skin cancer screening done, no appointment necessary, staff on hand, a couple, so may not get the same one unless asked for. easy visual exam, give you the once over. only differential may be the price, 1000 two years ago. i'll be there at end of march or beginning of may. will check out camillion hosp also, as that's where we do our yearly full med check ups, if available there, will do there. guessing cheaper there. they have excellent check up program there, 3500 baht, on sale from 6500, though always on sale, so marketing. but includes all that i need. ladies 2000 extra for the added fem stuff. includes more for the baht than udon hospitals offer, and do a better job than AEK or Paola, IMHO. in bkk, if in the area, again, if early, no appointment necessary here either, don't eat or drink coffee before going, and no morning piss, as you'll need a full bladder for bladder ultrasound. or you'll be drinking a small liter and wait a bit. but they have detected things udon has missed. think i do the deluxe program, will investigate and report, and update any changes from last year.follow up with cost and contact details
now that's special, you and Val, right next to each other, you could of double dated. hope i make it that longToday is my 70th birthday
, even longer to reach Val surprised i made it this far 
Second time nhs they had to put me out as it was very painful (and I'm a renal colic sufferer) I put it down to the medical teams inexperience. 
UPDATE:jingjai wrote:I've had a hell of a scary week. After my appendectomy last month, my guts still didn't feel right. So I went to AEK on Tuesday for a gastroscopy (camera tube down my esophagus) and a barium enema (a tube up your you know where).
The gastroscopy showed I had Helicobacter pylori (quite common in Third World Countries) and is fairly easily treated with medication. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._pyloriThe barium enema showed a narrowing in my colon. The radiology diagnosis/report said: "Malignancy highly suspicious. Biopsy recommended." The guy I saw at AEK said he could do a colonoscopy. He also started talking about the worse case scenario if it was malignant, that he could cut out the bad parts and try to splice the good parts of my colon together. If he couldn't, he started talking about a colostomy bag, not a pleasant thought to think about spending the rest of my life sh1tting in a bag attached to my mid-section. Naturally I freaked out and started thinking the worst....At least half the world's population are infected by the bacterium, making it the most widespread infection in the world.[56] Actual infection rates vary from nation to nation; the Third World has much higher infection rates than the West (Western Europe, North America, Australasia), where rates are estimated to be around 25%...
I went home and called a friend and got the name of his gastro guy at Bunrungrad and made an appointment to see him on Thursday. I showed him the reports and he scheduled a colonoscopy for Friday morning. The preparation for it was far worse than the actual procedure.
After I woke up, they took me to his office for the results. When I walked in he was reading the report with a serious look on his face. Then he looked up, smiled, and said: "It's not cancer." Whew! What a load off my back. He said he removed a few polyps that he said were causing the narrowing, and he sent them to pathology. So, it's still not a 100% until he gets the pathology report back on Monday, but I think since he has done so many of these, that he wouldn't say: "It's not cancer", if there were any serious doubts or questions in his mind.
The message I'm giving to everyone, is if you have never had a colonoscopy and are over 50, get one. It is recommended that people over 50 get one every five years.
Which is a lot of medical mumbo-jumbo for: It's not cancer!adenoma /ad·e·no·ma/ (ad″ĕ-no´mah) a benign epithelial tumor in which the cells form recognizable glandular structures or in which the cells are derived from glandular epithelium.
So, even though we may all feel young at heart and in spirit. Remember, our bodies have been working for x-amount of years.We are older [our bodies at least] than we act. Our parents' generation rarely had young spouses, nights out, etc. So, for us living as we do, we don't feel as old as they did, and, it is easy to forget the things one is supposed to worry [have concern] about at our age.
, shopped around for price, though knew where i would end up, unless large difference, none worth it. AEK 2200 for procedure only, Paventvinter, sp. old paolo, 2400 quoted, hosp on corner of ring rd/nk rd, a number 1971 or something on it, quote 2800, though expected that to be the cheapest, since older hospital, go figure. i have a good repoir w/docs at Pav. hosp, so knew i was going there. mentioned the price difference, and they honored AEK udon price. not included in price was pre consul, again, lied thru my teeth, symptoms, blood in stool for over 6 months, a major red flag, so test shouldn't be refused, also throw in family history, though that is true. approx 500 for consul, hosp charge, flushing agent for overnight, then back next day for procedure, less than an hour. 
Colonoscopy Journal:
I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy.
A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a colour diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis.
Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner.
I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!'
I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America's enemies.
I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.
Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor.
Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-litre plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a litre is about 32 gallons). Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.
The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose, watery bowel movement may result.'
This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.
MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but, have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another litre of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.
After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep.
The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on Andy?' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.
At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked..
Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep.
At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.
When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point.
Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand.
There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' had to be the least appropriate.
'You want me to turn it up?' said Andy, from somewhere behind me.
'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.
I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling 'Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine,' and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood.
Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that It was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.
On the subject of Colonoscopies...
Colonoscopies are no joke, but these comments during the exam were quite humorous..... A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies:
1. 'Take it easy, Doc. You're boldly going where no man has gone before!'
2. 'Find Amelia Earhart yet?'
3. 'Can you hear me NOW?'
4. 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?'
5. 'You know, in Arkansas , we're now legally married.'
6. 'Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?'
7. 'You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out...'
8. 'Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!'
9. 'If your hand doesn't fit, you must quit!'
10. 'Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.'
11. 'You used to be an executive at Enron, didn't you?'
And the best one of all:
12. 'Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?'
5 litres or Epsom's salts to clear the bowel prior to having the camera shoved up your ass ... and yes it was vanilla flavour... tasted like sh#t so added some lemon squash to sweeten it up whilst sitting on the toilet and waited for the 5 minute "piss out of your ass" syndrome, BAD MISTAKE! the lemon squash made my ass sting worse than a bar girls pussy after pulling 6 trains at the least! next shot ..... Naw still ai'nt working ..... ... next shot, oops you fuc#ed that one up! only got half of it in ... OK try again ... OK it hit the spot now cos I've just got a cold rush up the back of my neck!... WOW .... I was asleep for all of 10mins! ... work up, sat up, and said " look at all those ulcers!" and went back to sleep!
I think what you had that first time was a sigmoidoscopy.jimboLV wrote:We guys have it lucky nowadays with the TV camera colonoscopies. I got my first one long ago before the minicams, and it consisted of a stainless tube about ¾ inch in diameter and two feet long ( which I am sure that the doc switched out with a 4 inch diam unit when I wasn’t looking?.) The idea was he shoved it in, shined a light down it and allegedly was able to evaluate your colon condition. Not a pleasant experience although I was sedated at the time.
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