Haven't been here in ages, hope everyone's doing well, and have a question:
I ended up having emergency surgery due to a small bowel obstruction. They let me linger a little too long, went into sepsis, and they had to remove some necrotic small bowel tissue. Still have about 5 feet left (they couldn't tell me exactly how much they removed). My original cancer surgery was an LAR for rectal cancer.
The recovery from this recent surgery was tough. For six weeks I was extremely fatigued, sleeping a good part of the day and night away. Ended up back in the hospital because I had abscesses around the liver, which were drained and they put me on antibiotics, including augmentin. The fatigure may have ultimately been lung issues from the surgery. Went on prednisone, advair and a nebulizer for roughly a week or so (the prednisone was 8, 7, 6 . . . for 8 days), and that really seemed to make a difference for my lungs and fatigue issues. Still taking advair.
Prior to this surgery, I had a pretty regular pooping routine, had gotten it figured out, the right balance of citrucel, diet, timing, etc. Now things are crazy. At first things seemed to return to normal quickly (but who knows), but then I went on augmentin for the abscesses and had diarrhea for a week. Stopped taking that about a week ago, but I'm still going a lot and have even had the dreaded waking up with a little surprise for several nights in a row. Even though I started using citrucel again (which is like metamucel), I'm still going a lot, and the poop hasn't really bulked up from the citrucel.
So, does anyone have experience with having some small bowel removed and whether that affects pooping? I would think not, but I'm all ears!
Thanks!