Posted 11/30/2013 10:41 PM (GMT 0)
Hi John I had a very similar experience, the second stoma (the loop stoma) is just harder to manage, no two ways about it. It is totally fine to take Imodium every day, you can use up to eight tablets per day. Try to take it 30-45 minutes before each meal. It's good to do two before breakfast, two before lunch, two before dinner, and two before bed. If you're taking a lot fewer than eight right now, increase your dose slowly -- you might not need to take as many as eight and taking too much could cause a blockage. For me the magic daily dose was 6.
In general you should avoid the food and habits that cause thinner output. Sugar, alcohol, caffeine, and spicy foods can all cause thin output. Also drinking liquids too fast, and hot liquids (tea, soup, etc), can cause your output to come out faster and therefore thinner. It's really important to stay hydrated so you might want to stop drinking plain water, which is hard for your body to absorb, and drink an oral rehydration solution like Pedialyte. Gatorade/Powerade have too much sugar and will actually dehydrate you more, so stay away from those.
Some good foods to thicken your output are cheese, oatmeal, rice, bagels, smooth peanut butter (not chunky), greek yogurt (not the sugary kinds), and marshmallows. Despite the sugar, Rice Krispie Treats are actually a good thickener for a treat once in a while. Bagel with cream cheese is another good thickening meal.
Since you just had surgery it's important to eat lots of protein to help with healing. Cheese, yogurt, meats that you can tolerate are good options. Protein shakes are OK too if you're having trouble eating enough.
Even doing all of the above my loop ileo still outputted a lot and I wasn't able to gain any weight between surgeries 2 and 3 -- it was just too high and I wasn't absorbing nutrients, even though I was eating a lot. Don't worry, this will all change once you have your reversal and get to use the j-pouch. The loop can be a bit of a headache but with a few tweaks it will definitely be livable until reversal. Good luck!