The Colon Club

So mom had her surgery on Tuesday.
She had a large mass in her cecum which was removed via right helicolectomy.
She was doing very well until last evening. She started vomiting and had to have a tube placed down her nose to drain fluid from her abdomen.
Surgeon said that her bowel is frozen from the trauma of surgery. So what does this mean? Anyone else had this experience and how long did it take to heal?
We were hoping that she could come home soon but this is such an unexpected setback.

As for her diagnosis:
The pathology report came back yesterday. I believe 27 lymph nodes were removed. All were negative.
She was staged at IIA (T3N0M0). The surgeon has talked to the oncologist and told her that she may not need chemo. Mom is ecstatic about that but I am a little skeptical. Stage II is such a grey area.
We live near a major University Hospital with a Cancer Center so I most likely will get a second opinion. I just want to be sure that all precautions are followed.

The condition is officially called an Ileus. Basically your gut has it's own mini nervous system and, if it gets handled too long or roughly during surgery, it will go to sleep and it can take a while to wake back up. Best as I can tell it's just a matter of waiting. Eventually things will start moving. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

I'm all too familiar with process. I had one after my LAR. Bloating and vomiting started two days after surgery. In went the NG tube (the most painful part of my hospital experience) and my gut finally started working 10 days later.

Big Jay wrote:The condition is officially called an Ileus. Basically your gut has it's own mini nervous system and, if it gets handled too long or roughly during surgery, it will go to sleep and it can take a while to wake back up. Best as I can tell it's just a matter of waiting. Eventually things will start moving. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

I'm all too familiar with process. I had one after my LAR. Bloating and vomiting started two days after surgery. In went the NG tube (the most painful part of my hospital experience) and my gut finally started working 10 days later.

Oh my that's scary. I can't imagine how awful it is to have the tube down your nose/throat. I hope it doesn't take 10 days to heal but yeah I've heard it's a waiting game. Her surgery took a little longer than expected so I guess her colon is very "angry" as the doctor put it. It's been a roller coaster of a ride. It was so happy to hear that her cancer was not advanced, we thought she was well on her way to recovery and then BOOM, this happens. I pray that her bowel becomes less angry soon!

Emkaye,
I’m sorry to hear about your mother’s problem.
I hope her bowel will wake up soon and that she will feel better!
For my hubby it was a slow start, it felt like they did not give him much to eat. Maybe it was to make it easier for the bowel. A longer surgery I presume will involve more bowel touching and potentially more ‘protest’.
Here is a research article about this phenomena- not sure it gives anything other than an explanation - but good to see that it is looked in to and investigated.
“Mechanism behind bowel paralysis after surgery revealed”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 093143.htm

LPL wrote:Emkaye,
I’m sorry to hear about your mother’s problem.
I hope her bowel will wake up soon and that she will feel better!
For my hubby it was a slow start, it felt like they did not give him much to eat. Maybe it was to make it easier for the bowel. A longer surgery I presume will involve more bowel touching and potentially more ‘protest’.
Here is a research article about this phenomena- not sure it gives anything other than an explanation - but good to see that it is looked in to and investigated.
“Mechanism behind bowel paralysis after surgery revealed”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 093143.htm

Thanks. I've been all over the internet looking for answers. Some drugs are known to aggrevate this
condition such as verapamil which she takes daily. They may take her off of it temporarily until this resolves and I pray it resolves soon!

My surgery was 9hrs... they were closing things up when the initial path report came back showing dirty margins. So they went back in an removed a bit more ... clean margins the 2nd time around.

Yep, the wasn't fun but it's still infinitely better than cancer. Soon enough it'll all be a distant, mildly unpleasant, memory.

One note of hope: I dreaded the ileostomy reversal surgery because I was sure I'd have another 2wk, Ileus related, hospital stay. Nope, stuff was a' flowin' in less than 12 hrs and I went home 48hrs after surgery. So, past performance doesn't predict future results.