brushed off by gi doc

Hi kyhurst,
I'm sorry that your GI appt didn't go well. Did he say anything about continuing the miralax treatment that your primary doctor started you on? The transverse colon is a very popular place for gas. Have you tried any thing for gas relief such as gas-x?

Kyhurst, I think your body is just taking a longer time than usual to get adjusted to not having a gall bladder. That your stool got yellow when you have diarrhea would indicate that you finally got some bile out into it--too much, unfortunately. I think I got about as adjusted as I was going to get 6 weeks after my surgery, but some people can take longer.

That you now seem to want to go between the two extremes makes it more difficult to take something to fix one or the other. You can look into those bile salts I told you about for when you are constipated, and then there is Welchol for when you get the bile diarrhea (you'll have to get your GI to prescribe that).

But I think the best thing you can do for now is to balance your diet. I found for about a month after my surgery that pork and beef made me have worse diarrhea, so I ate no meat except chicken and tried to go light on that. If you can stand to be vegetarian or mostly so for a while, you might want to try that to give your guts a break from digesting the protein and animal fat. When you are getting constipated, you might want to try to add in dairy fats like cream, whole milk and cheese and other good fats, like olive oil and avocados and nuts; the consumption of fat should stimulate your guts to produce more bile so that you will soften your stools back up. Avoid fats when you are getting the diarrhea.

I think the best thing I do for my guts is eat a pretty consistant diet day in and day out. I'll eat the same thing for breakfast every morning for at least a week, usually for several weeks. Lunch is usually soup, salad and crackers with a spread, and I vary the type of soup and spread I eat no more than once a week. Supper is often the same thing every night of the week. My body has gotten used to having the same amount of fat, protein, sugar, carbs, etc. every day, so it keeps my guts from varying too wildly. Luckily I've never wanted a lot of variety in my diet; my mother, on the other hand, would go crazy if she ate the same thing every night of the week. Even if that doesn't sound appealing to you, you might want to try it for a month, just to give your guts time to settle into a routine. At the very least maybe you will establish yourself as solely constipated or solely diarrhea, and then you can treat whichever type you have without worrying about tomorrow being the exact opposite.