And in good news for everyone, while awake colonoscopies can eliminate the patient hassles of arranging a ride and losing productive time to recovery, staff can also save more than an hour per patient, according to a 2014 study in the World Journal of Gastroenterology. Sedation can also boost profits.Ĭonversely, by reducing staffing and medication costs, going sedation-free can deliver significant patient savings. Members of the medical community may not mention it, being reluctant to change the way they operate or-quite understandably-preferring to work on a relaxed patient unlikely to hoot and holler. As one friend told me, “I don’t want to be awake while someone’s doing that.”įreudian fears and embarrassment aside, many people-like me, until I asked-simply don’t realize sedationless is an option, let alone a sane option.

Some experts think it will help if unsedated is replaced with sedation-free or medication-free, but no matter how you put it, it still comes down to where you put it. Some data suggest that less than 20 percent of us would consider the option. But here in the Home of the Brave, we’d rather not prove we’re badass with, um, our ass. Staying Awake Isn't as Radical as I'd Thought And after all that fasting and purging, I wanted to eat big, and do it soon. People,” the nurse said, “There can be some discomfort.” While I was still deciding if I was “some “Can I do it without the medication?” I asked. I couldn’t take the day off and still hit my deadline. “We recommend you not conduct any important business for the rest of the day,” she said. But then the nurse mentioned the lingering “amnesiac” properties of the meds I’d be mainlining. My brother and a friend both said they’d emerged from their colonoscopies feeling rested, so I was eager for the chemical snooze, after which I’d knock out some work. Not that I had really planned for this to happen. In both cases, I was part of a trend in which more and more people are choosing surgery and other procedures without sedation.

The colonoscopy-age me just wanted to skip the hangover and finish a work project by the deadline. In neither case was I being a tough guy: The younger, poorer me just didn’t want to shell out cash for the giggle gas. Lying there wide-awake as the doctor removed the colonoscopy tube from my hinder, I recalled that time in the 1980s when I had four impacted wisdom teeth gouged from my jaw while under nothing but a local anesthetic.

Mac anesthesia for colonoscopy