Colonoscopy & Barium X-ray colostomy reversal

I've had both of these procedures in the past few months - don't worry, they are not painful or traumatic at all. For the scope, yes, you will be asleep, so no worries there. It will be going through the stoma. Just show the nurse how your bag works so they can correctly take it off and put it back on, since you'll be unconscious.

For the barium enema x-ray you will be awake but you don't feel a thing. The worst thing that'll happen is you may get messy. Even if they tell you no prep for the x-ray, avoid eating/drinking for a while before it so that the stoma output slows down. They use a small catheter that they hold in your stoma and then pump barium through it. I seriously didn't feel anything. It's very small and there's no nerve endings in the stoma. The only issue is the stoma wants to push things out, so it'll spit out output as well as the barium. They had towels everywhere but I still got barium all over my underwear. The whole thing took maybe 20 minutes.

I was all stressed about the tests as well because they sound horrible but they were really no big deal at all. Much better than the traditional place that scopes and enemas go!

Nope, wafer won't need to be changed. Remove bag, do procedure, put a new bag on. It'll go fine, you're not going to wake up in the middle of the colonoscopy!