My first partial colectomy

[aurumjd]

I'm scheduled for surgery in a few days. I'm getting about a foot of bowel taken out on my right lower quadrant (no bag). Any info/advice/secrets anyones got to share I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks and good luck to us all.

 

[DJW]

From my on personal experience...walk, walk, walk. It help speed your recovery.
Sensing you my support.

 

[hawkeye]

Walking is good. I started walking more on the third day following the operation.

 

[aurumjd]

Thanks for the support.

 

[UnXmas]

Have you had the surgery now? How are you getting on?

 

[aurumjd]

I did and they didn't remove anything. It seems my symptoms are worse than the active disease as far as they can tell. They said I have mild crohn's and something else is mimicking severe crohn's symptoms. I'm headed to the mayo clinic for more tests. To see if it's crohn's on top of a motility disorder or they have no clue. Something to look forward to. Anyone ever hear of a case like this? Thanks for your interest.

 

[UnXmas]

Hi, well I don't know how similar my situation is to yours, but I do have digestive motility problems in addition to Crohn's.

Gastroparesis and GERD are motility problems affecting the upper digestive system, and it seems a lot of people with Crohn's also deal with these, as the forum has support groups for them:

http://www.crohnsforum.com/showthread.php?t=58833

http://www.crohnsforum.com/showthread.php?t=62702

Motility problems affecting the lower digestive tract can be harder to distinguish based on symptoms, as they tend to cause diarrhoea and constipation, which can have so many causes, though obviously with Crohn's constipation is far less common. What symptoms are you getting?

There are various tests for motility problems: bowel transit studies, gastric emptying studies. But I'm surprised they got as far as surgery with you before realising Crohn's wasn't the main problem - blood tests and faecal calprotectin usually give some indication of how much inflammation is going on, and while gastroparesis and GERD can lead to some inflammation, it's usually far less than even just moderate Crohn's, and I'm not sure that lower motility problems involve inflammation much at all. Did you have any scopes or other tests to assess your Crohns recently?

 

[aurumjd]

I was diagnosed with GERD before I was with Crohn's. I've had every standard scope and scan you can think of. 50% of the time it shows moderate Crohn's and 50% of the time it doesn't show anything. Though I have symptoms 99% of the time. It seems the symptoms are disproportionate to the level of Crohn's they can find.

Any ideas?

 

[UnXmas]

What symptoms do you get besides the ones from GERD?