Word: colonics
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...such concerns were foreseen when the President and Nancy Reagan arrived by helicopter at Bethesda Naval Hospital from the White House about 1:30 Friday afternoon. A routine checkup in March-had disclosed a polyp in the President's colon, and his doctors thought it prudent to remove it and make a thorough examination of the entire intestine at the same time. But they were in no rush and told the President he could schedule the procedure just about any time he chose. He eventually selected July 12, a day when there was nothing much on his calendar...
...Reagan was in an operating room for what was a minor surgical procedure that did not even require a general anesthetic. Doctors inserted into his colon a tube with a wire snare attached to remove the polyp they knew about, and an optical device to allow close examination of the intestine. The second polyp they discovered was too large (about the size of a baby's finger) to be removed in that manner; all they could do then was scrape off some cells from the polyp's periphery for a biopsy. Though Reagan was conscious, he knew none of this...
...through the battery of tests drearily familiar to anyone who has been prepared for major surgery: chest X ray, electrocardiogram and CAT (computerized axial tomography) scan, a kind of super X ray of a large portion of the body. The scan showed no sign of cancer outside the colon. The tests ended about 11 p.m.; Reagan then read for a while (what, no one would say) and fell asleep a bit after midnight. He was awakened at 5 a.m. Saturday for an antibiotic, and went back to sleep for another three hours...
President Reagan first learned that he might be susceptible to developing polyps in May 1984, when doctors discovered a growth in his intestine during a routine physical examination. The discovery was made with a device called a sigmoidoscope, a tube containing a light source. Inserted into the colon, it enables doctors to examine the walls of the lower part of the intestine visually...
...around the suspect polyp and passed an electric current through the wire which cauterized the polyp, freeing it from the intestinal wall. Held to the end of the colonoscope by suction, the polyp was withdrawn. Using the same instrument, the doctors visually scanned the rest of the President's colon. It was during this examination that the larger polyp was discovered in the cecum, at the juncture of the large and small intestines...