BOAT, WHAT IS THE LATEST WITH YOU?

No decisions made yet. Still doing physical therapy and waiting to go to johns hopkins (appointment isnt until the 15th of august). I have tried to find someone nearby who uses botox but have had zero luck :(

I got a another year deferall though which is a relief.

I feel like it should work. I am not really constipated, as everything goes through me fast, I just cant get it out. Also, whenever I sit in the sitz bath or just my tub, it will relax stuff in my bum and I will go a bit but then stuff tightens back up. If we can just keep it relaxing I am sure it would be fine.

I met with my surgeon and it turns out I have a pretty nasty anal fissure. He says I could have had it for a while and it could have been gradually getting worse making it harder to go/causing my internal sphincter to spasm. I am going in Tuesday to go under anesthesia so he can look around. If he sees what he thinks he will we are doing a sphincterotomy to allow the internal sphincter to relax and let me go easier.

It makes sense as most of the time when I sit in the sitz baths the warm water will cause things to very briefly relax and some stool would come out (but things would tighten up again fast).

Say some prayers for me tonight. Surgery will be tommorow at 12 30 or so.

GOOD LUCK Boat!!! thinking of you!!

my gosh boat, i hope he figures out soon what exactly needs to be done. best wishes!

my stricture is a about 5 mm. I am meeting a guy who is head of the advanced endoscopy something or other center at my hospital. He will be doing the dialtions. I will also be getting botox into my internal sphincter and puborectalis august 26th so I am hoping that will help.

best of luck boat! hope it works out!

Boat, my original diameter was 25 mm which would make sense as you are a guy and likely just a bigger person than I. So 30 mm would make sense. If you are in to 5 mm they can't stretch it too much the first time. It will shrink in some over a week or so. Then they do the next one.

Here were my diameters:

25 mm originally

anastomosis after sigmoid colon removed shrank to 4 mm. They dilated out to 20 mm first dilation, anastomosis shrank into 8 mm in a week

Dilated out to 25 mm second dilation.

Stayed at 20 mm for 4 months

Then shrank to 15 mm and by then the length of the stricture has gone from 1 cm long to 10 cm long and that whole 10 cm of my colon was nonperistaltic.

Best wishes, sure worth a try, but end ileo may be coming your way. I do not know what it is about these hookups but many don't work that I have heard of people who are not on this forum that I know personally, then mine too so, you are not alone.

My dilations again were done rectum to colon not rectum to small bowel, that is why your dilations are being done to a smaller degree.

Will hope the best for you.

My current issue of dizziness may be due to acoustic neuroma. CT scan of my head showed wide auditory canal where it enters the brain. Doc said some people just have this as an anomoly but there could be something causing this. So MRI with contrast of my brain on Sunday. I looked this widened canal up on google and it said acoustic neuroma (brain tumor) often shows this way on a CT then the MRI with contrast confirms it. Am praying this is not so, esp after all the gut stuff I have battled. But time marches on and other things can set in. I am 55. I will pray for you and you pray for me that I don't have this brain tumor. I do not think I could deal with one more physical issue. I am literally spent with medical stuff.

Best of luck. Keep me posted. Rosemary

Yes boat. What is happening is that poop (effluent in your case) is building up above the stricture and bloating you until it comes out. Trust me with a colon anastomosis stricture as bad as yours, I REALLY experienced bloat!!!!!!! You should have seen the amount of poop stacked up above my stricture on the gastrograffin xray. I was really surprised my colon did not rupture. My colon was stretched to about 4 times it's normal width. So when my defendant surgeon (original surgeon who removed my sigmoid which in the end through my case was found not to need removing anyway) when he put in writing to me 5 times "I will do nothing about your stricture" the guy basically wrote his own ticket to a law suit.) Hey, I just followed his lead

Anyway, the fact that you CAN defecate through such a narrow stricture means that though your stricture is as severe and narrow as mine was, the fact that you can poop through it means that it is not as tight as mine was. There are narrow loose strictures and narrow tight strictures. Yours is loser than mine was.

Logically, what this translates into is that the dilations on you MIGHT work. Mine being so narrow and tight meant that the scarring was severely within the walls of my colon and in time did spread length wise. Where as yours is pliable enough to let poop through, maybe your dilations will work. Glad you added this info.

Rosemary

Good luck boat. Hope it works.

I had my brain MRI today and the doc cancelled the contrast injection. I was not allergic to the stuff and was ready for it, but Oh, well, maybe what this doc was searching for would show better without the contrast?

Am new at all this neuro stuff. My honorary MD is in gut issues

Best wishes, Rosemary

Well, the first dilation we got it to 15 mm, and it only shrunk back to 13 mm (which he expected and siad thats good). This time he dilated to 18mm. Bad news is he is saying there is definitely some prolapse going on which he thinks is con tributing to the "ffunctional obstruction" when I try to go. So I will most likely have to have surgery for that and my surgeon will just go ahead and make a brand spanking new anastomosis. Botox is set for next friday, and we will have to pick a date for the surgery.