bowel rest

Christine,

It might take more than 3 days for bowel rest to work for you. Standard treatment for those as ill as you is about 14 days in the hospital on IV fluids. It certainly won't hurt for you to do this at home but be sure to get adequate fluids.

Sue

There are Enteral Nutrition shakes you can buy. Sometimes if your doctor will prescribe them they will be covered by insurance.

I don't think keeping food out of your bowel will actually heal it...but that's just my opinion and I don't really know. I know that when I was flaring, if I didn't eat at least a little something my gut would be even more gurgly and gassy. Bowel rest was never suggested for me. I think you would be able to tell in a day or two if it's working!

But if you wanted to do a liquid diet, there are so many different kinds of shakes, I think you would have to try a few to see what works best for you. I like the AE Edge carb control, which has a lot of protein, as the occasional meal replacement.

You'd have to make sure you got the right nutrients and the absorb plus or something like that would be the only way I would think.

Unless you were in the hospital for bowel rest.

Any type of stool going through the rectum will hurt since you're so inflamed. With the intake of any food source except for an IV will have you still pooping.

Yours isn't the colon, it's the rectum....moderate inflammation that's active still hurts like freaking hell.

Maybe you should discuss it with your doctor.

Keep us posted.
q

I often wonder if being on a lifeboat for a couple of weeks after the rations have ran out could put a UCer into remission.

     Thanks for all the suggestions.  I tried the cort enema this morning.  This is the first time since my flex sig on Wednesday.  I was so badly inflamed that I daresent put anything up my butt until today.  Amazingly, I was able to inject almost the entire contents.  For the last several weeks I was only able to inject about 1/4 of the bottle and even that just bubbled up and oozed on out.  It actually stayed in for about fifteen minutes too before I had the urge to evacuate.  The doctor wants me to try this every day even if I cannot retain it for long because he said it will at least coat the rectum.  I only went three times this morning, still with urgency but no bleeding and no pain.

     I talked to a friend of my daughter's boyfriend who had the J pouch surgery done in 2000.  His case is different from mine in that he has Crohn's Colitis and still has his rectum in tact although it is constantly getting infected.  Why he doesn't go in for a bag is beyond me.  He takes a lot more meds than I do and goes to the bathroom ten times a day and twice at night.  Well, I have a better quality of life than he does!!!  He said Remicade almost killed him...he developed serum sickness and his white count was ten times the normal limit.  He was hospitalized for over twenty days...this was prior to his surgery.  UGH!

    

Hi Christine,

My first GI tried to explain to me why I needed to take it easy on myself by saying, "your entire colon is inflamed... that's like having your entire upper body burned. Imagine your arms and torso burned, would you need to slow down and rest? And you wouldn't rub a tomato or a chile pepper, or corn chips on it, would you? You need to give your colon the same care."

I still let that echo in my head now and then and try to give the damaged area a wee chance to heal before I make it work some more. I don't know if it always makes a difference, but logically a little bowel rest feels like the right thing to do. I know when I was too sick with a cold recently and couldn't eat, I felt better than I had in months.

Potato's right though that it makes it hard to keep your nutrients up (even taking supplements) as well as a healthy weight.