At least you all, understand

Hi there, welcome to the forum. You will find VERY nice and understanding folks on these forums. Healing Well is a wonderful support group!! Like you I found myself in a similar boat, from having the bottom part of my colon removed due to cancer. Details are not that important right now but I too struggled in the beginning, at my worst I was having 3 bm's during 1 meal. The minute I produced saliva I seemed to have an urgent bm. It was awful. I joked I'd be eating my meals in the bathroom from now on. My family (husband and 2 daughters, back then 4th and 7th graders) were understanding. I found several colon cancer forums back then (13 years ago), and one recommended a low residue diet for a post-op patient having nearly the same symptoms as I was experiencing. I looked at that list of foods and they made sense because my insides were an absolute wreck. I was living my life 20 feet from a bathroom at all times. I went on the LRD and within 48 hours I did have formed stool, it was repetitive in amounts, that's for the rest of my life, but if I stayed on that diet, I did okay. I could leave home, go on short errands, etc. But I always knew where every bathroom was located and still do. I never sit down on a toilet unless there is TP and if it's clogged or hasn't been flushed, I make sure it works first. Just a series of self-checks I implemented that are now so ingrained. They will be with you too. I am sorry to hear you are struggling so much. In a nutshell, here's what I did:

1. Ate only foods from the low residue diet list. Think - plain foods, white bread, white rice, bananas, applesauce, mashed potatoes, roast chicken or turkey, etc.

2. Kept a food journal. Any ordinary 1 subject school notebook will suffice. Designate 1 page per day, write only on the front of pages, record every single thing you ingest, whether it was chewing gum, or mints, to taking meds for a cold. All important details. Record what you drink too.

3. Ate 4-6 small meals, not 3 large meals like I had before my surgery.

4. I ate only for 12 hours, the other 12, I consumed tall glasses of water, until bedtime but did not eat any solids after dinner. This was to give my insides a chance to settle down, from the onslaught of food continuously coming down the track.

13 years later, I still eat foods from the LRD list, about 75% of the time. No longer need the food diary but one is highly recommended by a lot of people on the forums. I would rate my days great, good or bad. Later I could flip back to find great or good days, so I could mimmick what I did on those days for good outcomes. That's why I suggested skip the back of pages, you will want to refer to previous days that you felt well on and eat only those foods.

Over time you may be able to introduce foods not on the diet, but for now, your insides might just need foods that zip right thru and irritate the colon lining as little as possible. Avoid high fiber, fresh summer fruits such as pineapple, berries, corn.

Again, welcome to the forum.
Mary/Marsky

Hi there Danny - if you decide to follow a low residue diet, white bread is what you eat. I in fact responded best to my local bakery's white bread the most. The closest to that type would be Sara Lee (original, thin sliced). From there, you have two types of wheat bread IMHO. You have whole wheat made from ground wheat such as Brownberry (I would imagine that would wreak havoc on your gut right now). Then in between whole wheat and white, is simple wheat bread (any diner would serve this if you asked for wheat over white with say your breakfast). I can now tolerate regular wheat but not Brownberry (it's just too much fiber).

The only white bread I avoided like the plague is Wonder Bread - it doesn't even seem like real bread to me.

One more thing to add, now that you're stuck in this IBS like chronic situation, there is one thing that seems to be consistent with my gut - its inconsistency! Which is so very frustrating. Just when you know you've done all you can to manage your situation as best you can, you can still have a very bad day. Now I try to not stress out about it, but when I first noticed that I cannot trust my gut 100% anymore to behave 24/7, I tried in vain to figure out what I had eaten that disagreed with me. So many things can affect the gut - resections, surgery, radiation in your case or scar tissue, improper diet, stress, etc. But most of us on this forum try to eat the foods that agree with us the most and avoid those that wreak havoc on our touchy GI tracts.

I wish you well in managing all of this. I actually managed my situation better once I realized I wasn't going back to my old bowel habits, 1 or 2 bm's per day. Those days were gone and never coming back. But I didn't fully comprehend this for a year or two. I do believe once I accepted my situation as it is and decided to make it as good as possible, my insides seem to relax and let out a huge sigh, figuratively speaking. I had been trying in vain to exist in a world with people having normal colons. I am nowhere near normal, and I will never be normal. :) Now I just do a lot of things to cope - eat plain foods, small portions, sometimes skipping meals for trips or social events, take a mild stool softener to keep my stool fairly consistent (sounds wacky but my docs finally convinced me that 50 mg of Colace is beneficial to me) and finally, a daily probiotic. I also sometimes do a Fleet's Saline enema once a week, to get the gunk out. My stool tends to become like putty sometimes and I hate that stage most of all. Another one of those inconsistent observations I've made over 13 years.

Feel free to ask any questions you have have. Even though I don't have UC, that forum here is very active and you may be able to gather more info on that forum, as I have. Again, welcome to HW family.