Surgery recovery time

Hello. First my name is Kellie my hubby Steven 30 is in hospital recovering from surgery after having his whole large intestine removed. He has suffered from colitis since he was 12, he went into hospital o the 20th of jan and was giving steroids and bio medical drugs which decreased his whole immunity, nothing worked he didn't pick up at all, so they decided on surgery.

On the 31st he went in for surgery, things didn't go to plan and he actually had a whole in his intestine and when they pulled it away it released fecal matter into his belly, 8 litres of fluid was required to clean him out and he ended up in icu in an induced coma to give his body a rest as he didn't have much fight.

He is still in hospital since surgery he has lost 15kg has no interest in food and has trouble keeping it down. He did contract an infection and is on a lot of antibiotics and still has fluid floating around. He is off most pain relief now except for Panadol and pandadine. They are thinking of putting nausal gastric tube back in however that is freaking him out!!

Has anyone had a simular experience?.. Can't see any light at the end of the tunnel, just want him well. Me and his 3 kiddos miss he sooo much.

Any tips etc? He is managing his stoma well.

Thanks for listening to my ramble

Kel

Hi thanks so much for the reply.

He has a stoma at the moment, but once all recovered he will be going for another surgery to make the jpouch, he was to unwell to do all at once.

How do you find the pouch?.

Just wish he felt better. Seems to be very very slow. So days I'm scared he will never be the same, he has lost soo much muscle and weight. I think his begin to think he will never want to eat properly again

Well the pouch is internal, I didn't have to have a bag..I was lucky enough to reconnect immediatley.
But the pouch is fine. I worry a LOT about blockage..but knock on wood only hapened 2x. Honestly, I ate tons of junk food after! and he may not put that much weight back on. Heck, I have survived most of this year on junk foods like chips and chocolate, and sugary stuff, and haven't put back on any of the weight that I lost (total of almost 70 pounds)... The big thing to remember is that some foods can cause tremendous bloating.. I avoid carbonated stuff as much as possible! a can of soda can bloat me up 2 pants sizes for DAYS.. I strongly suggest sweatpants for a bit!
Recovery is going to be slow, some people's digestive systems can take a while to recover from surgery, and since his was already compromised it may take a bit longer..
Believe me, you are already miles ahead of some people at this point! By that I mean I didn't know about this site until a while after my surgery..and you are already here :) This is a great place to get help... medically, emtoionally and spiritually... lean on us, we are here!
You would be good to connect with AnotherUCWife... she has beenthru a lot of this, and can help you too!
Best of luck, if you need anything, just ask :)

I'll second what others have had to say. I went into the hospital with a volvulus.....twisting of my sigmoid colon. It had twisted 540 degrees and was shut down. They tried to untwist it a couple of times by way of a colonoscopy, but that didn't work. Instead, they took out 18 inches of my colon and left me with a temporary ileostomy. I was in the hospital for a week for that. When I got home, I was feeling quite bad. It turns out I wasn't eating the right things or drinking enough of the right things, so I had a small bowel obstruction. After vomiting a number of times, I ended up back in the hospital with severe hydration and a very bad electrolyte imbalance. I had the NG tube back in, and I was placed in the Telemetry Care Unit, as my electrolytes were so bad there was a risk of having a seizure. This time in, it lasted another week, but I did at least get better information on diet and fluid intake. I was actually doing pretty well at home this time, but woke in the middle of the night with a heavy cough and a fever. I was diagnosed with pneumonia, likely from something I had aspirated when they stuck the NG tube back in me. This hospitalization lasted 10 days and included another surgical procedure when my colon prolapsed into my ileostomy bag. After all that, however, about a month later, I got everything reconnected. I didn't need a J-Pouch, as the only reason I didn't get reconnected with the original surgery was too much inflammation on the ends that would have been reconnected and too much risk of an infection. The whole episode started on May 1, 2010 and I was reconnected on July 22, 2010. By mid-August, I was back at the gym and working out regularly.

A long way of saying that it most definitely gets better.

     I know the ng tube is very uncomfortable going down.  I had to have mine placed back in a few days post op because I was vomiting profusely.  The ng tube was a Godsend.  It stayed in another few days and worked itself out...I have no idea howso..lol.  The surgeon thought I removed it myself, but I didn't.  Thank God everything was ok.