leighhi27 said:
Hi Ruth,
Thanks for your reply. My back pain is in my lower back. I try not to eat much gassy stuff and i limit myself to one carbinated drink a day. I will certainly check out Mebeverine HCI. I have never heard of it. I am so sick of doctors that I want to check here first about the back pain before I made a trip to the doctor. You have an illeostomy? How is that working for you? On March 16 I am having a bowel resection and a repair from my seton surgery that went wrong last Spring and I will have a temporary ostomy. I personally don't know anyone who has had this surgery.
Leigh
Hi Leigh, yes I do have an ostomy, a loop ileostomy. I had my surgery back in June last year as I had major problems with fistulas and like you had setons, but they did nothing at all. I had a laparotomy, where they cut from the top of your belly button right down to below the bikini line and the a seperate incision for the stoma. The stoma itself took a little getting used to, I was a little freaked out by it at first, but my stoma nurses were great and I soon got used to it. I was in a lot of pain when I had my surgery, purely because my epidural fell out and I had a stomach drain in as well as the 2 operation marks and then 2 drains in my rectum so as you can imagine, when the pain relief wore off, I was in a lot of pain. Once I was able to control the pain, things were a lot easier. I was in hospital for a week, I should have been in quite a bit longer but I cried for the last 2 days of my stay and begged to go home, so they eventually gave in. I was walking about, I think on my 4th day after surgery, but very slowely and it took a good 4 months before I was totally back to being able to do things again properly. I had got to grips with looking after my stoma within again about 4 days and although in the early days I had quite a few leaks, that didn't put me off. I found a couple of great Ostomy sites and found loads of helpful hints and tips.
www.ostomyland.co.uk and
www.the-ia.org.uk.
The good thing about having an ostomy is that you have no urgency to go to the loo. I have my reversal soon and to be honest, I'm going to miss that. Not looking forward to loads of D again!!!The other thing is that although you have to avoid a few things that may block your stoma up, you can go back to eating most of the things you stopped eating before you had the op. The crohns symptoms almost disappear and once you heal the pain that you will have had from your fistula will just disappear, its really quite remarkable, how much better you start to feel, well worth the surgery.
As far as clothing goes, I'm only a size 12 (USA 8) and find that some of my tighter fitting stuff I can't wear anymore but I can still wear jeans and dresses and skirts, I just tend to stay away from the tight little tops, I tend to get looser fitting ones, or I wear body tops underneath to hold the bag closer to my body. Theres loads of other stuff I could tell you, but no doubt you have loads of questions in your mind so if you want to know anything ask away, I'll be happy to help, whether its day to day stuff or lady's talk if you know what I mean, just drop me a line.
Hope this helps and good luck with the surgery, you'll be fine.
Ruth
) out there have very severe back pain? I have taken all the different types of pain medication that i have and none of it helps very much, a little but not a lot. 
