1 month after bowel resection

[Lorella]

Hey guys,

So just over 1 month ago I had my first bowel resection, they took out my terminal ileum & cecum. Surgery itself went well & after 4 days I came home from hospital.

But, I can't eat. I was told I could eat anything I wanted, in the hospital I was being served up veggies with skins on & seeds. So I come home, I eat what I want & BOOM, literally my stomach explodes, I've never had such bad cramps & diarrhea in my whole life.

4 weeks have past & its gotten to the point where I'm scared to eat, I'm consuming maybe 400 calories a day. I was referred back to my dietician & they are putting me back onto nutritional drinks called Fortimel & I've also been prescribed Questran.

I've had 2 sets of bloods, due another one in a few days. The markers were borderline normal & a stool sample was normal as well.

Is this normal? Will I ever be able to eat again normally? I regret having this surgery as I don't feel it was needed really.

 

[deb123]

Hi Lorella,
my heart goes out to you. I had my terminal illeum removed in 2005, and thought i had made the worst decision ever. I couldnt eat as everything went straight through me. Before i ate around my illness so i could leave the house.
I think you may have to play around with the amount of Questran you are taking. I started with 1 sachet in a pint of blackcurant squash, and stirred it up as i drank it. If that doesnt work try a pint and a half with 1and 1/2 sachet, and so on.
I would be careful what you are eating as well, i was careful as your bowel is still recovering. Bland things that are easily digestable would be your best bet, and nothing to fatty.
I was in remission for 7 years so thats good going i think, and i had more energy than i ever had, and was glad i had the surgery.
I also only take the questran, and no other drugs, just B12 injections every 3 months.
Good luck and let me know how you get on.

Deb

 

[Manzyb]

Hi Lorella,

I had a bowel resection back in January and I have to say for the first 6-8 weeks I suffered with the endless diarrhea. It was awful, it was worse than before I had the resection. From what I understand, when you have that part of your intestine out, you have trouble absorbing the bowel salts and that causes the dairrhea. I can't take questran b/c it made my stomach hurt way too bad. I'm now taking Psylllium husk which is a supplement and it has been helping out.

I hope you start to feeling better soon!! One month out is still early!

 

[skippy111]

Anything with nuts or seeds ESPECIALLY PEANUTS are out!

They do not digest well with chrons. corn also will just go straight through...

you might want to put yourself on a liquid diet for now till things settle, not completely liquid, grits, cream of wheat are good, yogart, frozen yogart, sherbert, water ice ... i even eat fresh green leafy spinach raw,

Belgian Waffles are good, i am able to eat them ok... (I am still with the bag)

Strawberries are sposed to be off limits but one or two doesn't seem to hurt me..

BEANS, omg... no way... BAG FART CITY!!

bananas are good for potassium, apple juice is good ...

you need your Iron and Calcium, cream of wheat has both.
Potassiun, Vitamin D, Folic acid,

Jello is good too...

as you gradually introduce solids ... it is more or less trial and error, if something irritates or agrivates then dont eat it...

good luck.

 

[Grugsley]

Hi Lorella!!

i cant say how RELIEVED i am to find this thread, i am basically experiencing this exact problem, and am very worried about it and doctors don't seem to know what's going on.

In a nut shell I had a bowel resection just over a month ago, small segment removed from my terminal ileum as well due to a 10cm stricture being found there. Before the surgery i had ranging between mild and moderate Crohn's, didn't really follow the usual flare up and then remission pattern, but some bad days, most good days and was controlled well by high dosage of pentasa. But I'm planning on going volunteering in africa in October so I decided to have the laproscopic resection to rule out risk of obstruction when i'm in Africa. So it all went well, took a bit longer to recover and spent 8 days in hosp and have my first BM, but since then been good...

But then over the last 2 weeks, been having worsening cramps and diarreah, passing more and more blood and been struggling at work, pretty much everything is making me sick, tried cutting out fatty food, veggies etc but still the same. Then on thurs morning woke up at 5am with severe diarreah and vomiting, my gastro and surgeon decided to admit me again to monitor, they sent me home last night, having an MRI on monday, to basically find out if it's an infection post surgery or acute flare up....

I'm so disappointed... having to have more time off work, i'm much sicker post surgery than before, and don't really want to leave the house. If it's the disease back a month later and worse than ever i don't know what i will do. I've read that sometimes surgery can actually aggravate the area but not sure how true that is...... the doctors all seem shocked, they said this isn't common and expected me to feel on top of the world by now i'm so worried!!!!

 

[Lorella]

Grugsley:

I'm really sorry to hear that your having such a horrid time Thankfully I've managed to pretty much get on top of problems.

I was told by my dietician to cut out food for now & go back onto these special shakes which I was on before surgery & then gradually re-introduce food. You should ask if you can maybe have something similar. If not then my other advice is to eat small meals, I mean small.

Also, get your vitamin levels checked. I had mine done a few days ago & my iron was very low which explains a lot of the fatigue I've been feeling lately.

I also had an infection but they picked it up by swabs & blood tests. Remember, this is your health, you have a right to demand answers!

Good luck & I hope you feel better soon

 

[Vicky]

Hi guys, ive just had a small bowel resection on the 31st of may! Like you i was out in 4 days and said i could eat anything, but anything i eat is just coming straight out but i dont seem to be loosing any weight. They said this was normal in hospital as your bowel takes a while to recover but im worse now than i was before i had the operation. My belly is getting bigger but its not swollen its really weird ! x

 

[Grugsley]

hi guys!

I don't know if this will help everyone... but I'll let you know what happened with me yesterday. I pretty much spent all day at the day surgery, having an MRI in the morning, which went for ages because they injected me with contrast to really have an in depth look at the surgery site.

Then I went and saw my surgeon and the good news is there was nothing huge to worry about at all... the MRI showed about a few "kinks" and an area of swelling right near the surgery site, so that's what's been causing the diarreah, vomiting etc.

Actually since yesterday those symptoms have really started to calmed down. I actually spent about 8 days in hospital and took about 11 days to have my first BM after the surgery last month, there weren't any complications, but my body just seemed to take longer to recover so maybe that's why i'm having these problems as well. I'm still losing weight but i'm just a normal weight so that's not a huge concern for me.

I've been instructed by the doc to stay on a low residue diet until I feel like this little flare up has passed but apparently it's supposed to settle on it's own. If it gets worse I'm supposed to go back and get anti biotics or something. They also said to remember it is major surgery and even though you might no realise it the bowel is still healing and will be for a while.

hope this helps someone!

 

[felicity1981]

I had a small bowel resection on 18 may. OMG is what comes to mind immediately .. I spent 10 days in hospital..my bowel took a week to wake up, lots of vomiting and LOTS of pain..then 2 weeks after I left the hospital I developed fever which sent me back to hospital, had to get a CT scan to determine no leaking..nothing could be found.. well ever since the surgery I have suffered terrible cramps, diarrhea and excess gas..way worse than before surgery..I worried I need to return to work in 2 weeks :-S...I have noticed that by making my portion sizes smaller it does work a bit.. I hope in time my stomach settles..

 

[Manzyb]

Grugsley and felicity: it will get better!! it takes quite a while for things to readjust and get better. From what I understand, after the surgery, you have trouble absorbing bowel salts and that causes the extreme diarrhea. I felt the same way after my surgery. It really took a good 6 weeks before I started to feel better after the surgery. it does take time for it all to heal.

In the meantime, i'd ask for questran or some type of bulking agent like that, you can even get psyllium husk over the counter to try and bulk up the stools a bit.

I remember after surgery I was still going 20 plus times a day. It was awful and I regretted having surgery, but it really does just take time! It is very frustrating.