Pain after small bowel resection and first BM

[CDmama87]

I had an open surgery to remove 7" of terminal ileum, my appendix, and my uterus reconstructed on 9/17/14, 7 days ago.

I am still in so much pain

I read that the pain should be for up to 5 days after the surgery but it feels as if I just had the surgery yesterday. It's so swollen, it feels like my stomach is going to explode and I'm still moving very, very slow because it hurts so badly. I am also extremely shaky and weak.

In the hospital, I had about 10 BM's after the surgery that was black coffee grounds and my doctor said that she wasn't surprised because I was so inflamed. But yesterday, I had my first real BM since the surgery but it was a huge amount of black tar stool, something I have never seen before. I'm getting worried that its not just old blood from before the surgery. Does this seem normal?

 

[DJW]

Personally I've never had that in any of my surgeries.

 

[Lisa]

Black tarry stool is a sign of intestinal bleeding from higher up. If you are a week out from surgery, I wouldn't think you should be having large amounts of that. I would give a call to your surgeons' office, also with the swelling and pain I would get checked. Have you checked your temperature to see if you are running type of fever or low grade fever? If you are, get to the doctor as that is another sign of infection.

 

[tzvia]

I would def. notify the surgeon about your symptoms.

 

[UnXmas]

Although I've not had the same surgery you had, I have had several surgeries and would say that anyone whose pain lasts only five days is very very lucky! Pain, even bad pain, at this point could well be normal, but you need to get the bm symptoms checked out, and when you do, make sure you tell the doctor about the pain as well. Even if the pain doesn't signify that something is wrong, your doctor may be able to give you better pain relief.