Partial blockage.....worried

[Fizzifish]

My name is Emma and I am a 37 yr old diagnosed with Crohn's Disease when I was 15. The early years were horrific and things came to a head when I was 21 I was x-rayed and diagnosed with two tight strictures of the small bowel. I underwent surgery for a bowel resection shortly afterwards. Unfortunately on opening me up, the situation was worse than was anticipated with abscesses etc so I ended up with a temporary ileostomy. I kept losing weight in hospital and got down to 7.5 stone (I am 5'11.5"). After about 4 weeks I had a second bowel resection to reverse the ileostomy and made a slow and steady recovery.

Since then I have only had the occasional minor flare up and I have remained surgery free. I had a barium meal x-ray a year or two back which showed up a narrowing of the bowel due to scar tissue at the site of the previous surgery.

I have been suffering with extreme urgency to go to the loo and incomplete emptying of my bowel for the last year and a half. My stools have also been thin and always floating like they are full of undigested fat. I put this down to IBS. However on tuesday I woke up with nasty cramps just below my naval so called in sick at work. Since monday (5 days) I have not had a proper bowel movement, just tiny trickles of diarrhoea. I can feel the cramps coming and when they do the left side of my abdomen becomes hard and lumpy. The cramp normally passes after about 5 seconds. Sometimes the cramp is immediately followed by some deep gurgling, othertimes nothing. I have seen my doctor and he listened to my bowel and said it sounded normal. I am still passing gas so I know that i don't have a complete blockage. I am convinced that I have a partial bowel blockage and have eaten only liquids for the last two days. I don't feel particularly unwell I am just really worried.

A couple of questions. Has anyone else on here had a similar complaint? I have read on the internet that most partial small bowel obstructions clear of their own accord. How long can it take to clear? It has been 5 days already. I made the mistake of lying in bed for most of the first 5 days and since I have got up and moved around more there seems to be more gurgling which I can only see as a good thing.

Thanks, Emma

 

[Nico85]

Dont worry Emma i get what your going through all the time, i have scar tissue and inflammation down at the tail end and sometimes i go a week without moving my bowel, the longest i went was 11 days. After a night out i get it but i take 2 Movicol and that softens the stool and lubricates your bowel and makes it much easier to pass. See if you can get some, they work wonders for whats happening to you.

Nicky

 

[lola99]

I had a partial smal bowel obstruction but i didn't know what it was and kept eating. But eating made it worse. I ended up in so much pain it was unbearable and went to the er. So im not sure about clearing up on its own. my stomach was making loud noises and i was still having some bowel movements. I ended up throwing up the day i couldn't take the pain anymore. I was in the hospital for 3 days with no eating. My gi doctor put be on antibotics and asacol while in the hospital. I also had iv fluids of course.

 

[Fizzifish]

Nico85

Nico85 thanks so much, I was hoping someone else knew what i was experiencing. The thing is I NEVER get constipation, there is no stool in my rectum, there is a clog up at the end of my small bowel. I was given some Movicol and have taken 4 in 500ml of water for the last two days. I think the problem may have been some particularly fibrous wholemeal bread which I have been eating at the start of the week along with some home shelled peas which I had twice. I also had a fruit salad with apple in which probably didn't help. I have just noticed today some small flecks of bran and pee shell in my watery diarrhoea so hopefully things will start to move through soon as I am sooooo worried!

 

[Nico85]

lol all the foods you mentioned there are notorious for drying up the bowel and making it hard to pass, and with someone who has inflammation and possible narrowing then ofcoarse it will be a bit sluggish. I had an xray in my stomach because i hadent done a normal ***** for 11 days and the doc said my bowel wasnt even full so it was okay. Thankfully after a few movicol i was able to go to the toilet.

I always think the worst when i cant do the toilet and keep thinin my bowel has closed over, but it normally sorts itsself out after a couple of days now.

I feel your pain though lol

 

[Fizzifish]

Do you get constipation or does the food just get stuck in your small bowel? Also do you keep eating or stay on fluids? I have got a low residue diet off the internet which I am considering trying. I had fun this evening when i went shopping at Morrisons and Lidl I bought the following: 4 tins of tomato soup, semi skimmed milk, golden puff cereal, 3pk of jelly+custard, neopolitan ice cream, chicken bovril, shredless marmalade, seedless jam, honey, soft white bread, brie, rich tea, malted milk + shortbread biscuits, jelly babies. Nothing like a nice balanced diet lol.

 

[Misty-Eyed]

A low residue/fibre diet is practically essential to people with strictures. I remember eating mushroom and really regretting it afterwards. I actually winced when I read that you had eaten whole meal bread! Unfortunately it does mean eating the opposite to what everyone else considers being healthy. I would kill for a bowl of muesli!

I would definitely get in touch with your gi though. Being in lots of pain and experiencing new symptoms like you are may be an indication that things are getting worse or something needs to be looked at. I think at least for your peace of mind it would help!

 

[Jefferson]

Hi Emma,
I once had a hotdog and chased it down with some raw carrots at a picnic over our 4th of July holiday a few years back and needless to say I wound up in the hospital for several days with an NG tube. Hey, it looked good at the time!! Like Nicky, I can go many days without a BM but when I do have to go it's usually not diarreaha, but formed and hard, almost constipation like. I'd stick with a soft & liquid diet until you get in touch with your GI.

Best of luck,
Jeff

 

[Nico85]

Do you get constipation or does the food just get stuck in your small bowel? Also do you keep eating or stay on fluids? I have got a low residue diet off the internet which I am considering trying. I had fun this evening when i went shopping at Morrisons and Lidl I bought the following: 4 tins of tomato soup, semi skimmed milk, golden puff cereal, 3pk of jelly+custard, neopolitan ice cream, chicken bovril, shredless marmalade, seedless jam, honey, soft white bread, brie, rich tea, malted milk + shortbread biscuits, jelly babies. Nothing like a nice balanced diet lol.

I was getting constipated every week nearly week but its not the food that gets stuck, its more to do with your bowel being a bit inflammed and your jobby gets stuck, your food has already been digested by the time it gets stuck, all it is will be your bowel being in need of some fluid.
Id find myself sitting on the toilet pan pushing and straining and willing on a BM but it was no use, i could actually feel it at my tail end but it would refuse to come out, but now i take 2 movicol in about a liter of water and within a few hours im on the pan and it all comes out. Its became part of my weekly routine. Im usually fine during the week but at the weekend after a night out, the next day im back to square one again. But i probably wont ever be able to pass fully formed jobbies because i have scar tissue, so ill need to rely on movicol my whole life, but i dont care lol.

 

[Kacey]

I experienced the very same thing a few weeks ago. A lot of pain, weird gas (felt like I was passing 1/2 a fart instead of a full fart LOL) BM's were urgent and alternating from D to C. I went a couple days without a BM and then would have a sorta normal one followed by D. Pain was around the navel, and being new to this symptom I thought I was getting a flu or something. (My usual pain would be lower right.) The pain got worse, as soon as I would eat. I stopped eating for a few days, laid in bed most of the time and felt sorry for myself lol...and then it passed. It spontaneously got better. My question is, could it have been a partial blockage? DO they really get better on their own? I've never had one before, I have been pretty lucky. But my symptoms are changing, and it's got me back on this forum looking for answers. I'm one of those people who ignore it, but that doesn't seem to be doing me any good these days.

 

[Nico85]

Hi Kacey
In my experience, i tend to get more narrowing of the bowel rather than anything else and therefor it makes it much harder to pass. I can expect it after a night out, alcohol must make my bowel narrow through inflammation. But it only lasts for a couple of days. Ill maybe take 1 or 2 stool softners and within 1 or 2 days im going to the toilet, and about 3 or 4 days later i can pass normal again. Ive been living like that for a few years, it doesnt bother me because i know what to expect. I dont get any pain or anything. Just strain a little when trying to pass BM.

Nicky

 

[Fizzifish]

well, since nothing had improved by Monday 1st August I went back to see my GP and she persuaded the surgical team at A&E in Yeovil to see me. My GP has been great through all of this. So there I was sat down in A&E with my bf bless him, got seen fairly quickly, soon on a bed with a very attractive young doctor filling out an incredibly long form asking me every question under the sun. Lay on the bed for quite a while eventually to be told they were moving me to a ward and a senior registrar would come and take a look at me before letting me go. It was about 10pm by this point and I was taken to the womens hospital. Unfortunately the girl in the bed opposite was vomiting violently so being an emetophobe I had to leave the ward and sit in the dayroom where me and my bf watched tv and spent some quality time together lol. It became clear that the senior registrar was not going to come round tonight so the nurses kindly moved me to another ward where some dear old lady was sound asleep and my bf left.

I fell asleep in the shorts and vest I was stood up in and only had my mobile phone (minus the charger) and a bottle of lucozade sport for company. I slept well and woke early. A bit later that morning, a team of 5 drs and various other medical people examined me and weren't happy that my bowel seemed to be a bit bloated. They arranged an abdominal xray and if that proved inconclusive, a ct scan. It had now been a week since I had had a normal bowel movement. The results of the xray arrived in the afternoon and the junior dr said there was a blockage and they needed to do a ct scan. The ct scan results came back showing no blockage but a large build up of faeces, or faecal impaction as they called it. Now this is very odd since in all the time I had Crohn's (22 years) I have never had constipation, and this is what I thought they meant by faecal impaction. I went to bed tuesday night feeling very bloated.

Wednesday morning I started to feel worse, my abdomen was getting more and more bloated and I couldn't pass any stool or gas. It got so bad that I spent about 2-3 hours in agony smashing my hand against the bedside drawer and making a mess of my knuckles. There didn't seem to be anyone on hand who could authorise anything stronger than a paracetomol or a bit of oromorph. EVENTUALLY, the pain team arrived and shot a *** of morphine into my butt and I was asleep. The senior registrar organised an emergency flexible sigmoidoscope to see what was causing the impaction. By the time the morphine had hit my veins, I didn't care any more, they could do what they wanted to me. I was wheeled off about 4pm to have my sigmoidoscopy and was delighted to find out it would be my regular GE doing the procedure. I told him how pleased I was to see him and he quickly shoved the scope up my ass and we looked at the telly. He quickly told me that the stool was liquid, not solid, took a biopsy and said there was some new inflammation from the Crohn's. He also kindly sucked out some poo and gas. I was quickly back on the ward and happily pooing again!

I was delighted to be on the mend but they wouldn't let me go until the friday by which time I had started taking my daily 40mg of prednisolone to settle down my new but thankfully mild flare up.