Hello all. Anyone had emergency bowel resection surgery? Advice on staying positive.

[Adam Matis]

My name is Adam and this is my first post on any sort of forum. I'm 23 and was diagnosed with Crohns 2 years ago. 3 days before Christmas I ruptured the section of shall bowel where the infection was located. I had emergency resection surgery with 12in of small removed and 4 or 5 in of large. The surgeon was amazing and things went well for the most part.

Frankly I'm just rocked. I've never been hit so hard in my life. I just got married 4 months ago and my wife and I have barely settled in and now this.

Little side-bar, she's been incredible. My strength through this whole ordeal.

Has anyone been through something like this? Hire do you start positive through the frustrating parts of recovery? Anything helpful from the other side of recovery would be awesome! :runaway:

 

[wee_vonny]

Hi Adam, I am in an almost identical situation to you. I'm sorry I don't have any advice as it is very recent for me too and i'm feeling really down about it all plus I am still very early into my recovery. I've written my story in the My Story section only about 5 mins ago so feel free to read it there and I'm happy to chat. I have a young family, aged 2 and 4, and when I was in critical care, my husband thought for a while he was gonna be a single dad. It has been so hard for everyone involved and now we need to come to terms with having a lifelong illness and all of the attacks and side effects to go with it. We have a long way to recovery and acceptance I think, to be honest but to get me through, I'm trying to see all of the positives. I certainly appreciate my family more and am not getting stressed over unimportant things. I'm also not worrying about work every day now like I was before all of this. I'm just trying to focus on the fact that i'm lucky to be here at all, considering all of the complications I had.

Yvonne

 

[grt73]

Hi Adam,
I had surgery a year ago and went in for further surgery on news years day after complications with resection. I spent 3 months off work, lost 20 kg in weight and felt my world was about to crash down. my other half was pregnant with our little girl through this and was my rock the whole way through. My only advice is not to dwell too much on what has happened to you. I found it extremely emotional, my whole life turned upside down. It's good to go back and see the hospital/nurses who looked after you after you are feeling better. Supposedly it helps with closure and realisation of what you are going through. Finding out you have crohns is one thing, having to have surgery to sort it is a whole different story. I also found I wanted to talk to people about what happened to me although very few actually understood or were really interested. You certainly find out who your friends are. This forum is a great read, knowing there are other people in the same boat makes alot of difference.
Concentrate on your health, don't stress, take good nutrition and as much as you can manage, exercise as much as you can and follow your dreams like you did before you we're ill.
Good luck and stay as strong as you can

 

[Kero]

Yikes Adam! Sounds like you had a pretty eventful Christmas! As far as recovery goes, stay on top of your pain meds, don't wait till you are in lots of pain to take them. If the doc prescribed every 4 hours or whatever, then take them every 4 hours. If you are in too much pain your body can get stressed and take even longer to heal, that and it usually takes about an hour for them to kick in

This board is amazing for support. Sending you healing vibes, both you and Vonny

 

[Adam Matis]

Thanks for the responses everyone. The insight and advice is really helpful. The pain isn't all the bad overall which is nice haha. It just puts everything into perspective reading some of your stories. Things could always be worse and I'm counting what blessings I've been given.

The hardest part has been sleeping for me. Cause I'm doing not really much of anything I'm never really. I was prescribed ambien(?) And it does help but its weird in and out sleep. You know.

Happy new year all!