Congrats on a successful surgery and getting home. I had a similar, laparoscopic surgery almost 8 weeks ago.
I was on pain meds in the hospital, took the vicodin for a couple of days at home, tylenol for a week, then needed nothing after that.
My diet was nothing the day of the surgery, clear liquids day 2, full liquids day 3, low residue (noodles, breads, etc.) on day 4, and went home day 5. I didn't have my first BM until day 7. I had a lot of urgent, loose BM's for the next 3 weeks, but have been more regular & even constipated for the past month. My surgeon said it will take about
3-6 months before some semblence of "normal" bowel function returns.
I have had some gas, but not any pain when I eat. I think if you have pain after eating, you should probably call the doctor.
My diet at home was and still is low residue diet. Basically low fiber, low roughage. These were doctor's orders. At my 1 month follow-up appt, I was told I could start slowly working some roughage into my diet, but make sure everything is chewed really well and don't go overboard...don't want to end up with a blockage. I plan to stick to a relatively low residue diet for most of this year. (not too hard because I've been eating that way for the past several months anyways.) I'd rather be conservative and re-introduce things to my bowels slowly.
For the first week or two at home, I tried to maintain a low volume of food and supplemented with 1-3 Ensure drinks per day. I usually ate something 4-5 times a day, and tried to avoid any single large meals. Low volume wasn't too difficult for me at first because I didn't feel like eating too much, too often, or large meals. The first couple of days at home, I ate 2 "meals" and 2-3 "snacks" each day.
And drank a lot. At least 32oz of water and 32oz of gatorade each day. Typically 8-16oz of non-acidic juice, too.
The other direction I got from the hospital dietician was to consume approx 100g of protein each day. That was really hard to do! I'm not sure how I could have done that w/o the Ensure drinks.
I've weaned off the ensure completely and am now eating 3 "normal" meals w/ a couple of snacks each day. Still avoiding large portions for any given single meal.
I typically eat something like:
toast & yogurt for breakfast
salmon, tuna, chicken, ham, eggs, or mac&cheese for lunch & supper
I've been avoiding fruits, veggies, high fiber breads/cereals
For the first month, when I had subs or other sandwiches, I would go without lettuce, pickles, or fresh tomatoes, but have been adding those back into my diet recently.
Post Edited (clonehead) : 7/28/2011 11:58:00 AM (GMT-6)