Are you scared of surgery?

No, I'm not. I figure if my life is miserable due to UC, I'd rather have surgery, as outcomes are generally good.

But it doesn't make sense that you're going to have surgery if they're starting you on Remicade. I mean, if the Remicade works, there's no reason for you to have it. And, nobody can make you have surgery if you don't want to.

I encourage you to ask your doctor questions. It sounds like you didn't really have a good conversation with your doctor during your appointment yesterday.

I do not think you are alone in feeling like this. I think all of us with UC or crohns are petrified of surgery but as fruit girl says, if you're life is that miserable from UC then it is probably a good thing to get your quality of life back. I think for me its the actually procedure that scares me. If they just did the whole operation in one go where you could go straight to having an internal ileostomy instead of having to have a stoma and bag, then that would make me feel so much better. I think its the bag and having to empty a bag of your faeces that is the scary part.

But I don't think you are there yet. If they are looking at Remicade then that has worked for loads of people and they have been on it for years and years. and if that does not work then they can look at other biologics. It depends how severe your symptoms are and if they are controllable with meds.

I don't blame you one bit for being scared - I would be - it's all the unknown stuff -

some folks are so sick that they are begging the docs to get that frickin colon gone - they are scared NOT to have surgery !

but, ya just take one step at a time and you'll do ok -

scared is a normal reaction -

hang in there buddy

I have a pretty low tolerance to inconvenience of UC as I get older, so if it impacted my life of functioning where the 5ASA meds didn't work any longer, I'd welcome surgery.

Would I be scared of the surgery? Absolutely. But I know I'd have lots of support to help me through the process.

You have to calculate your quality of life of what it is now compared to what you could do if you had the surgery. I meet very few people on here who have regretted it.

q

I think you know yourself if the time has come for you to have surgery. Only you know when that time is based upon your symptoms, disease management, mental health and intolerances and being refractory to medications. Therefore you should listen to yourself and do not rely on the advice of the doctors as they will just give you the textbook answer after they feel they have exhausted all drug options. You may want to look at alternative meds, dietary changes or something like acupuncture or probiotics that may really help with your symptoms and that they doctors will not tell you about. I am not saying these alternatives help everyone but they certainly have some people on here. We all need to take responsibility for our own health and use the doctors as a side line for advice.

However this all depends on your symptoms at present and how desperate and urgently you require treatment. When in a bad flare, you do end up feeling more reliant on the medical professionals because you want to get better quickly so you tend to listen to them more as you feel that they should know. When in remission, you feel a little braver in trying new alternatives and you also have time and health on your side.

Just weigh up your options but as I mentioned previously, I do not think you are at that place yet in terms of surgery.

I never wanted surgery, I fought it for years and suffered; looking back that was a mistake that I made about my health.

By the time I went for surgery I was actually excited, I wanted the suffering to be over. I jumped up on the the surgical table and told them to get my colon out of me. I felt so much better when I woke up and I knew at that point that I had made the right decision.

I used Remicade for almost 5 years and it worked great for me, it allowed me to live my life normally and postpone surgery. I'd focus on Remicade first before I started looking at Surgery. Prior to Remicade I was really sick and needed to use Cyclosporine to get my flares under-control and at that point I should have had surgery.

Yeah, surgery scary, but after years of fighting I welcome it when it comes.

I am terrified of surgery. I've heard many horror stories...

There are horror stories from any surgery. My mom was scared to death to have to do balloon angioplasty for clogged arteries around her heart and refused to do it due to horror stories. Later she developed gall bladder problems and needed gall bladder surgery. The doctors warned her that because she hadn't done the angioplasty she could have a heart attack during the gall bladder surgery. They were right and she died during the gall bladder surgery but the point is that if she hadn't been so terrified of the horror stories connected with the angioplasty and had done it, she may not have died during the gall bladder surgery. Death due to colon cancer is not a pretty thing so sometimes holding off on surgery is worse than the surgery itself.

So where exactly does it say that colon cancer or parathyroid issues aren't preventable in the first place? Preventive medicine is turning out to be key in addressing many of the common medical problems today. For example, omega-3 (as opposed to omega-6) in diet has shown to decrease UC risk in one European study.

And why does the word of the mainstream medical establishment have to treated as gospel these days? Unnecessary and invasive surgical procedures, as well as the unnecessary use of medications have put a tremendous strain on our medical system. Look up the data on how much people are paying for medical treatments, and how many are getting unnecessary surgical procedures these days. The financial burden on future generations is going to be out of control unless we find some way to save on medical costs.

Given the massive data that is accumulating on epigenetics, we now know our gene expression changes based on environment. Change the environment and we change the variables that put us at risk for many diseases. Stress, by far, causes the most telomere (and thus genetic) damage in the long haul. We are not predisposed to any medical ill if the conditions are right... not by a long shot. What was once thought to be certain, isn't certain anymore.

There is still much research to be done on the microbial realm and how it pertains to ulcerative colitis. Many have done the unthinkable and addressed their particular pathology by identifying which species of bacteria they are missing. FMTs are quite literally crapshoots, but they hold strong promise in delivering real cures.

Guardian7 said...
So where exactly does it say that colon cancer or parathyroid issues aren't preventable in the first place?

Nowhere, but whether something is preventable can't affect your treatment decisions once it has already happened to you.

I have no idea what your post has to do with this thread.

My last post was offensive so I deleted it. I think it's better if I refrain from posting about subject matters that rile me up. Good luck to those contemplating surgery.