Stuck in hospital after surgery

Seeking advice, encouragement. I am stuck in hospital. Help! :) On January 7 I had a small amount of small intestine removed due to a series of strictures, a strictureplasty in a nearby area, and a fistula removed (unexpected, surgeon found it while he was in there). My recovery went very well and I went home after a week. Unfortunately, I was back in the hospital less than 24 hours after being discharged with a blockage. The NG tube went back in and I was readmitted.

That was a week ago. Now, I am stuck in what feels like an endless holding pattern. My NG tube output is reasonably low but not quite low enough for my surgeon's comfort. I am currently getting clamped for 5 hours and suction for one hour. The outputs are 200-300 mL most times, but around 8-9am there has been a larger amount, around 500 mL, which is stopping me from progressing to the next phase.

Any suggestions? I am walking as much as possible, probably close to 3 miles a day (many, many laps of the hospital floor) and have also started doing some light bend-over toe-touching exercises to try to stimulate my GI tract as much as possible. What else can I do? Anything I could bring up with my surgeon to help move things along?

For what it's worth, my surgeon is highly respected and I have confidence in him. I'm just frustrated that I've been in hospital for just over two weeks now (with a 24 hour period at home in the middle). I am slowly but surely going insane! :)

Thanks, ambling. I'm on TPN now so at least I'm not getting any scrawnier.

I have bowel sounds and I feel a fair bit of gurgling most days. However I'm not really passing gas or stools - occasionally but not really that regularly or in any significant volume.

I'm allowed lozenges. Any particular brand that you would recommend? Should I ask my surgeon if I could sip a small amount of peppermint tea?

May be a stupid question but are you on any morphine or codeine based medications. Reason being that morphine in particular can put the bowel to sleep and this always happened to me after surgery until my latest operation last October. Instead of morphine I had oxycontin PCA (am on it normally and it doesn't affect bowel badly and am now immune to morphine after so many surgeries) and for first time bowel worked immediately after surgery. Previously, it has shut down for over 7 days and needed NG to drain stomach and only way I got bowel working again was to have NG tube removed, drink loads so stomach became so full that is made me violently sick and this seemed to kick star bowel. Hasten to add, not something I'd recommend but now we have found oxy works without problems.

Hope you start feeling better soon.

Do you have a laptop? I watch a lot of TV shows when I'm in the hospital. I also walk the hallways a lot.

Checking on you to see if things are better. How are you?

Wow, what I rough time you've had! I hope you're back on the mend and stay "clear". I had an obstruction at the anastomosis after my colon surgery, but it was so low down that a dilitation took care of it. Take care!