Two days post-op from bowel resection - need advise please

Good evening everyone,

Well I finally had my bowel resection done Friday morning. After five hours of surgery and a little over two feet of small intestine removed (a little of the large and a little of the colon) I am now healing up and dealing with horrible gas pain. The first day I had trapped gas in my right shoulder and arm and boy did that hurt, but now it's in my stomach and I can not release any of it. I've been doing very well walking (I started walking about five hours after surgery and have been walking as much as my body allows, but no relief. Any advise? Also, if you don't mind telling, how many days out of surgery were you finally able to go to the bathroom?

Also just as an update to my previous post on how the surgery was done. They were able to do it laparoscopically with hand assist. Here is the one thing I didn't know they could do, but was pleased that they did. My surgeon did a horizontal incision down low on my pubic line (c-section like, below panty line).
Yeah, I can still wear a bikini!!! Also, no bag!!!


Thanks for all of your help!

You are only a short time out of surgery. Try to keep walking as much as possible as that helps the bowels to wake up. And Randy is right, when you start going you are going to go. You will have this explosive diarrhea for a few weeks until your body adjusts to the changes. Also, try to keep your diet light for awhile to allow your body to adjust to the changes. Heres hoping the surgery leads to a long long remission. Make sure you get back on maintenance meds so you don't have to have a repeat of this experience. Hugs!

I had a bm 3 days post op, and it pretty much exploded all over the place. It was not pleasant at the time, but I was able to laugh about it fairly quickly.

The trapped gas will take some time for your body to absorb it; I'd say a couple of weeks at least. It will go down slowly each week. I had a lot of trapped gas in my abdomen and it did hurt quite a bit.

Glad they did yours lap, it will make recovery a lot easier. And I totally agree with Nanners, get on a maintenance med ASAP. I'm on pentasa and imuran.

Best wishes for years of remission...for both of us!

Thanks for all the replies. They finally gave me some medicine that is suppose to help with gas and so far so good. The pain in my shoulder finally went away and now I am feeling pretty great except for a sharp pain in my lower right groin. The Dr. Said thAt this is where they did most of the reuse toon do it's to expect a majority of the pain in that area.
Great news! My surgeon said today that as long as nothing changes I will be going home tomorrow morning! That's four days post-op! I want to thank you all for all your great advice and just being such a great support system for me.

what's probably happening is that the nerve endings on one side of the resection point is not sending any signals to the other side, just because the flesh is together does not mean that it is wired together.


Stay sitting upright as much as possible
Drink broth several times a day, the warm liquid wakes up the whole intestine
Walk several times a day
Chew small meals throroughly, several times a day
Much of the gas is caused by narrowed intestines due to surgery inflammation, besides antiinflamatories I take Donnatal to release the spasms
Lie on one side, gently massage the side pointing up, lie on other side, massage again

The meals, walking and medication will diminish the bloating over time. My last surgery took about 3 weeks to see results, in two months I was doing very well.