Hello everyone,
I have been through so much in the past months. I have had Crohn's for 20 yrs and in February I had my 1st CD related surgery. My ileum was perforating so they did a resection a week later they had to go back in I had adhesions, an abscess and 1/3 of my lg intestine was toxic megacolon. THen after that surgery I had an abscess drain put in on the right the left abscess was too small. They removed the drain the next day...my surgeon was on vacation when the drain was put in and removed...they followed by doing a colonoscopy since it appeared that my rectum walls were thickened. I think I had a total of 15 Ct scans since Feb 11th. I was readmitted to the hospital after only being home 1 day the CT revealed the abscess was back. Not to mention I had a wound vac on due to an inscision infection. The next day they went in to place a drain and the abscess was gone. I stayed a week and was sent home again. about 1 week later I was readmitted again. The abscess was back, they were able to place the drain in it the following day. They discovered that the abscess had made fistulas to my stoma site and to my wound and it was dissappearing due to the wound vac's suction. To this day I still have the drain and the abscess is no longer getting better. I have been on Augmentin 875 mg 2 times a day since March 30.
I am going back to surgery next week to remove the abscess for good (I hope) and at this time they are going to reverse my ostomy. The SBFT that I had last friday showed normal loops in the small bowel and no fistulas at this time. My surgeon is going to have one of his assoc colorectal surgeons assist him this time rather than a resident. They blocked out the whole day from their surgery schedules to focus on me. I will be in for at least a week, and I am praying for no complications this time.
The way my stoma healed was away from the skin therefor feces is getting between the layers making this abscess stay. Every day I flush the drain and the sterile saline comes out around the pig tail catheter, around the stoma, out the bottom of my inscision, and some goes back into the drainage collection bag. I chose a different hospital this time due to residents screwing up my treatments royally as well as the 1 who let feces get into my inscision causing that issue. Others wrote out my Rx when discharged and for the wrong amounts and length of time.
Hopefully after this surgery I wont need another for a very long time again if ever again but with Crohn's you never know :(