The Colon Club

O Stoma Mia wrote:Has the Pelvic Health Center nurse been to see you in the hospital yet? Maybe she can give some hints on how to manage pain once you leave the hospital. Perhaps there are some ointments or creams that have Lidocaine, Xylocaine or something similar that would help with your radiation-induced pain and skin problems.

Has your mother come to the hospital yet, or is she still at home? She might be able to help out with things at the hospital before you are discharged.

How is it going now? Has there been any reduction in pain level? Are you able to get up and walk around a little?

Aqx99 wrote:... I'm on a normal diet now, though I am choosing my meals wisely.

O Stoma Mia wrote:

Aqx99 wrote:... I'm on a normal diet now, though I am choosing my meals wisely.

It's good that you are taking a pro-active stance with the hospital diet. What I found when I was in the hospital was that it was often better to decline the standard meal that they wanted to serve and to try to order something else that would fit into my dietary restrictions. For example, if the lunch for the day was announced as ham-and-cheese sandwich I might try to change it to an omelette or something else that I could handle. This meant that I would have to contact the kitchen before they sent the cart around with the meals. I tried to keep on a low residue diet there as long as I could.

Do you know how much longer before you will be ready to be discharged?

Aqx99 wrote:

O Stoma Mia wrote:Has the Pelvic Health Center nurse been to see you in the hospital yet? Maybe she can give some hints on how to manage pain once you leave the hospital. Perhaps there are some ointments or creams that have Lidocaine, Xylocaine or something similar that would help with your radiation-induced pain and skin problems.

Has your mother come to the hospital yet, or is she still at home? She might be able to help out with things at the hospital before you are discharged.

How is it going now? Has there been any reduction in pain level? Are you able to get up and walk around a little?

My mom comes every day in the morning and leaves in the evening. She has been helping me go for walks. I haven't had any pain medicine since 6pm last night. I'm on a normal diet now, though I am choosing my meals wisely.

Aqx99 wrote:I came home this morning! They were impressed with my progress. I had my first bowel movement last night around 11. I was able to feel it coming and get to the bathroom on time. That made me happy.

Aqx99 wrote:I came home this morning! They were impressed with my progress. I had my first bowel movement last night around 11. I was able to feel it coming and get to the bathroom on time. That made me happy.

Aqx99 wrote:.. I'm still learning what foods do what to my system...

O Stoma Mia wrote:...
Food-Toilet-Exercise Log- I have a Food-Toilet-Exercise log that I used for the first couple of years after reversal. It had three panels. In each of the panels I had items organized by time, where each item could have several subscripts to further describe the item. For example, in the Toilet log I used the Bristol Stool Chart for describing the type of stool, but I also had other subscripts, like 'size of stool', 'color', 'level of urgency', and 'time on toilet', etc. It was the same for the other panels: Each item entered in the spreadsheet had multiple subscripts.

The three panels were then interleaved and displayed on a master timeline so that I could see the overall pattern.

I haven't used my spreadsheet for a couple of years now, because my situation has stabilized, and I now know all of my bowel-movement trggers by heart. .But when I was first starting out, I used the spreadsheet on a daily basis for planning purposes.
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