Aqx99 wrote:I had a robotic LAR on June 14th. I was out of the hospital on June 17th. I had minimal pain, even in the hospital. By the last day, I had not asked for pain meds at all. I currently have a temporary loop ileostomy and am going through chemo. I feel that my surgery was very successful, for what I have experienced so far.
benben wrote:I had Robotic Assisted LAR post surgery - pre chemo.
I don't really know if it was helpful for the Robotic assist or not.
What I can say is that surgery went pretty well. Even though I had robotic, they still had to give me a large c-section like incision.
This is where they removed the tumor, mine was close to 5 inches in length. They removed 8.2 inches of combined colon/rectum.
Only about 2 inches of my rectum was removed. I had very little pain post surgery. The only time I was in pain was during movement, especially anything that involved stomach muscles.
My advice, use your upper body/arm strength to lift yourself up without using the stomach muscles. I only took 1 pain pill post surgery on first day home.
I spent 4 days in hospital, although they told me I could go at day 3 - but I still had a drain in so wanted to wait for that to come out - which it did the following day.
As for bowel activity. The more rectum removed, the more issues there are with post surgery bowel movements.
I'm now 3 months and 11 days post surgery. My bowels have improved, especially during first 5 days of chemo treatment. I get slightly constipated and have only 1 or 2 movements a day.
Come day 6/7 it starts to get back to 5-8 for a few days as chemo is leaving the body. Then last few days its 3-6 movements a day usually. Right after surgery after coming home I was experiencing 12-16 movements a day. Yeah, really, that's a lot of time on the pot! I had a very hard time for about 5 weeks even going as the surgery internal swelling seemed to block off the colon area when sitting. I literally had to stand/squat during that time. Thankfully I've been able to sit since about 5 weeks. If you need to slow things down Imodium does help. I take a pill the night before, if I know I need to go somewhere the following day without having to be worried about mad dashes to the can.
The first few days after surgery, my stomach was really bloated - I was concerned as I was relatively flat stomached prior, but after a few weeks the swelling decreased and now I'm back to flat stomach - in fact probably flatter than pre surgery as I've lost about 20 lbs - 10 around surgery and 10 since chemo.
Good luck Basil,
May your surgery go smooth and you awaken to little to no complications.
Basil wrote:My surgeon is the section chief of colorectal surgery at MDAnderson. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak, but based on my course of treatment I have the utmost respect for his judgment. I hope his resume supports his skill with a scalpel, and the robotic stuff.
Basil wrote:Well, said awkward as it is to type this, the drs. said, welI I can't remember the exact terminology, but the import is that I have a very tight sphincter. Can barely tolerate a finger exam.
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