Surgery 30 days away

ks1905 said...

ByeByeUC said...
I had my Cyclosproine treatment at Mt. Sinai and I met with one of the surgeons there....Dr. Bauer. While I liked him (I heard he's one of the best) I hated the hospital and I thought the nurses on the GI floor were awful. I was there for 7 days. Worst experience of my life.

Ouch that's saying a lot "worst experience of my life", I was at Mt Sinai twice for Cyclosporine for 21 and 23 days. Not fun experiences but I've probably had worse like being stranded in airports overnight with no hotel rooms available.

lol yeah I was not is a good frame of mind at that point of my UC career!

Pluot,
Looking back I never should have taken that stuff but desperate times called for desperate measures! Toxic is putting it mildly!

I have some advice for what to do about surgery. Try one more thing first before you do it. I was scheduled to have surgery in March 2011 to remove my entire large intestine and rectum and have the j-pouch in a two stage surgery. This was after every other treatment approach had failed after 12 years of Ulcerative Colitis with an almost chronic flare.

Three days before I was scheduled to have the surgery at Mayo Clinic near Jacksonville, FL I found an article that had been published in the Journal of Gastroenterology called "Treatment of Ulcerative Colitis using Fecal Bacteriotherapy." In the article Dr. Thomas Borody documented 6 cases of treatment-resistant Ulcerative Colitis which had been effectively treated using fecal transplants. I was excited there was another option and I stayed up all night doing research to weigh the pros and cons of surgery. It was my determination that the side effects and complications of surgery had been understated by the doctors. My conclusion was that while post surgery my quality of life would be better than in a peak flare it would still not be great. I noticed that surgery used to be performed for stomach ulcers, but then later the role of h. pylori bacteria was discovered and they are now treated with antibiotics instead. I decided to delay surgery to try the fecal transplants first so that if I did end up having surgery at least I could do so without having any regrets or wondering "what if." What if I had surgery only to see it turn out to be completely un necessary 10 years from now?

When I told the colo-rectal surgeon he thought I was crazy and gave me a flexible sigmoidoscopy on the spot where he said that my colon and rectum tissue were "blown" from chronic inflammation and scar tissue and could never recover. This didn't sound right to me, and since I was not in an emergency situation at that moment, I decided to give the fecal transplants a shot.

To make a long story short I ended up doing the fecal transplants in June and July 2011 and after about 6 weeks I added Bupropion (Wellbutrin) to my treatment regiment after reading a post about its successful use on HealingWell.com. The Colitis symptoms went into an almost immediate remission and a colonoscopy 8 weeks later revealed significant mucosal healing. I set up a website where I have articles, videos and answer questions from readers at http://www.FecalTransplant.org if you would like more information. I have now been symptom-free without having to do anymore fecal transplants or take any drugs. This was after 12 years where nothing would work and I was told surgery was my only option.

Bottom line, there is another option, however most doctors won't tell you about it and surgeons certainly won't.