Worried for my dad- help

Hello everyone,

I am hoping someone can give me some understanding/direction.. insight for my dad. My dad went in to have a lower anterior resection 2 months ago and still can't seem to leave the hospital. He has had 4 surgeries due to complications (leaks after each surgery). These surgeries happened within 5 weeks time with the last surgery almost taking his life. With the last surgery which happened on December 10th, there seems to be no leaks this time, but his output is staying at 3 and 4 liters daily so he went into kidney failure. The doctors and surgical team has him on 5 medications to try to slow the output and they are almost out of options. This has been an absolute nightmare. He has an ileostomy, mucous fistula and urostomy. We have modified his diet to see if that would work also

I had high output but nothing close to that amount, I was over 2 liters a day.

From my experience it took some time but it gradually slowed down, my system was in shock and was not absorbing enough liquids but as my intestine healed things improved.

Is your father at a really good hospital(teaching hospital)? I’m surprised by the continuing leaks.

Every time your father has surgery to repair the leak it is a shock to his intestine and it won't absorb as much as it should (causing high-output). As his intestine heals then his output should decrease, but that takes weeks. It seems that they keep having to operate and it shocks his system preventing him from healing and starting the cycle all over again.

If that was his final surgery then the output should start to decrease soon. Has there been any decrease in output (on a daily or weekly basis)?

If there is no improvement then maybe you can get him transferred to another hospital that specializes in GI surgeries. I went to NYP Cornell in NYC, they had patients that traveled from all over the world to treat their severe issues.