Thanks everybody. No explanation as to cause other than that it is not all that rare. I was tapering narcotic meds according to schedule at the time and it is certainly possible their paralytic effects played a role. I am off all narcotics for some time now and hope to be off even Tylenol within days- can put up with the remaining mild incision pain. After my first discharge I was havng mushy sometimes even semi-formed outout in short order and everything seems to be on track. Then output got liquidy and more frequent, then I increased soft but thickening foods like bananas, and then all of a sudden one day all output stopped. Kept sipping water but before I knew it by late afternoon I was in agony. I am told this unstable phase is not that untypical.
I have been told that to normalize the output to the long term semi-formed / 5-6 x a day target I need to do things in the following order, and each of those steps in turn done gradually to allow for delayed effects:
1. Increase mix of so called thickening foods / decrease thinning foods
2. Try Metamucil or psylium husk powder in no more than 1 teaspoonful in one glass of water at least 45 m apart from any other food or drink, starting once and eventually up to 3x a day (which can be increased to multiple spoonfuls)
3. Immodium 1/2 hour before a meal, starting with say 1/2 pill before one meal and gradually increased to as many as 8 pills a day.
These are supposedly all steps one can take gradually to retrain the small gut to absorb water. So far, these past couple days after I got out of the woods of the ileus, the amount of bulking foods I have added has been small as I still need to travel by air home and woukd rather deal with this high output than risk a repeat of what happened last week. Heck, no way do I ever want to fall into that h-hole again.
Have been using pedialyte - actually pedialyte diluted in half- as my ORS for now and continue to pee. Oh, also dealing with a re-
opened incision that needs to be repacked 3x a day- i think blueheron and some others had to go through that too. Like blueheron, my midline incission (the port of hand assisted lapro) is very close to my stoma which, until it heals, now requires a funky arts and crafts approach to positioning my wafer.
I dont think the whole bag thing will bother me in the least, once I solve the riddle of this high liquidy output without re-paralyzingly the bowel again. I guess patience and baby steps are key. Still no regrets- got sharp photos of my colon before it was dissected and it looked pretty awful, missing mostof the nice folds of a healthy colon and narrowed miserably down in a few spots from eons of chronic inflammation. Now i just need to be a workman in retraining the new system.
Oh, I did have two episodes of liquidy D that lasted more than a week (one was 2 weeks), in the two months prior to my surgery. It gets me to wondering if I had something that escaped pathogen testing. A bit of a longshot theory though vs simply that I am now dealing with a small gut that doesnt know yet how to respond to the new plumbing. Certainly not panicking. @Pluot- when you had your week of liquid D output on your end ileo, you had other symptoms too right? i am sure this is not any sort of infectious cause but rather just the volatile post-surgery phase. Didnt you eventually use immodium in your liquid D output? I didnt know you had a semi blockage from immodium shortly after surgery though. Immodium will be my last resort and if I use it I'll start with a very low dose and wait a day of delay before upping , repeating the cycle. But food manipulation will be my first weapon.
Post Edited (Probiotic) : 5/14/2013 5:56:08 AM (GMT-6)