Hi. I am a newbie to this support group. It looks amazing. I hope I'm posting in the right place.
I am 64 and have collagenous colitis and mastocytic enterocolitis. My d-predominant c.colitis went undiagnosed or treated for ~20 years. In 2013, I had uterine cancer. I'm ok. The surgery was enough to stop it.However, it caused pelvic floor issues. In May/2015 I had Altemeier perianal rectal prolapse surgery. It failed not too long after. In Sept/2016 I had laparoscopy ventral rectoplexy with no resection. It failed 5 days after the procedure. I am waiting for a bowel motility test. It is not available privately in the entire province.
Because of the long waits for surgery and the dysfunction associated with having a prolapse, my severe longterm diarrhea changed completely to severe constipation. I have had to do a 1.5 litre water enema virtually every day since June 2015. In October 2016 I had to resume the daily enemas. Unfortunately, the enemas probably make my bowel function much worse. All the prescribed laxatives, softeners, etc. were poorly tolerated. I had to take about a litre of polyethylene glycol with electrolytes daily for a while. They caused severe rectal bleeding and made the prolapse much worse.MOM makes me feel like fainting, and so on.
What is occurring for the last number of months before and after the last surgery is that I have what I suspect to be a bowel blockage, I had one in April 2016 and the full bowel prep of Golytely eventually cleared it. However, it took about 6 hours or so to start working. I almost had to go to emergency which is ~a 10 hour wait here. Your number probably gets called after you drop dead in triage.
Now the blockage is much worse than ever.I was supposed to stop all laxatives, enemas, etc while waiting for the motility test. However, I have been waiting almost 3 weeks.Now the constipation has probably turned into a blockage. I have terrible waves of abdominal pain that can last for hours. I can't sleep much. I had to start the enemas again. I had no choice. For the last few days I have had to do repeat water enemies every few hours all day. Sometimes each procedure can last for 2-3 hours. Last night I was up until 5 am.For the first few days, I could only evacuate one very hard small lump + a lot of blood. I read that if you have a severe blockage you should not take a laxative because you can cause a rupture. If I even drank water it did not go through my gut. I cannot eat solid food. Even pureed infant food won't go down.I feel that if I go to the ER they won't believe me, because I don't look sick.It might be a case of "liar, liar, pants on fire". I am normal weight and have good colour (thanks to rosacea). Also, I never throw up. I didn't even throw up with severe nausea during both pregnancies.
I live in Montreal, so I may have to wait a very long time for any kind of treatment. I had very long waits for surgery. Socialized medicine here is the worst imaginable despite our very high taxes. Plus, the government has decided to stop the subsidy to all private colonoscopy etc clinics by Jan.2017. If a doctor wants to keep his private clinic open he has to opt out of Medicare (RAMQ) thus jeopardizing his OR privileges, etc .Therefore all private clinics will close shortly. It's a nightmare here.
Bottom line (no pun intended) I don't know what is the smartest thing to do. I cannot reach the surgeon because, with my luck, he's under some witness protection plan.My GP is nice but probably would be of no help. I have tried virtually every med, food, etc known to man. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
