Well I'm back on my feet again, but I've had a rough couple of days. I won't go into all the details because you probably don't really want all the details. If you really want them, leave me a comment and I'm more than willing to share, I'm just figuring the people reading this are more interested in generalities than specifics. Let's just say I had a complication come up that required me to see my doctor earlier than my scheduled appointment, and then he had one of his assistants drive me to the hospital right away for a pleasant little procedure requiring anesthesia.

What's funny is that my doctor said in the 25 years he's been doing this, this is the first time he's seen this particular problem come up. Luckily he was able to identify the problem quickly and fix it easy enough because what I was thinking the problem might be wasn't good at all. What I did right on my end was that as soon as I started thinking there might be something more serious going on, I quit eating until I got word from him, and then he had me only take clear liquids until I saw him. This I'm sure made diagnosis of the problem much easier.

So anyway, repairs have been made and I'm back headed in the right direction. I'm on a restricted diet for a while now though which kinda sucks. I'm on clear(ish) liquids and meat only, until Sunday. Weird huh? So I can have 7-Up and steak. Chicken, fish, eggs are ok too, along with liquids that don't have much residue and are not too dark. Absolutely no fruits or vegetables or breads. This is going to be a rough diet. I had turkey for dinner but without anything with it, it just doesn't fill me up for long, so I'm starving again.

Oh, and I'm not supposed to do any major walking for a couple days either, to give things a chance to heal up. This problem wasn't related to my excessive walking in any way though, just a precaution now.

-jk

So I've been home from the second surgery now for a week, and things are progressing. The first few days were really rough, but things are starting to ease up now. Everybody said it would be easier, but I almost prefer the pain from the first surgery to the symptoms I have now. Pain is easier, you take a pain pill and find something to occupy your mind. I don't have anywhere near as much pain now, but I've been in and out of the bathroom so much it's not funny. Still, I will say that it is definitely getting better. Things are slowing down and getting much easier to deal with. My trips to the bathroom have been getting less frequent and the changes I've made in my diet are helping to reduce the inflamation as well. All in all, I'm definitely headed in the right direction.

I have been getting a pain in my stomach though that I'm not sure what to make of. It feels like things are just pulling on something tender, like the stitches on the inside are irritated and just pulling in an uncomfortable way. It doesn't hurt all the time, but I notice it more when I've been up for a while walking, unfortunately. Also, the wound where the doctor did the reconnection still has the steri-strips, and the left side of that wound is still completely numb and swollen. It's only been a week so I'm not too worried yet, but I would have thought it would have made more progress by now. It's not red or looking infected in any way, and the tugging pain completely goes away when I'm sitting down, so I don't think it's too serious. I have a doctor's appoint toward the end of this next week, so unless it suddenly gets worse, I'll at least see what the doctor thinks is going on then.

I'm still walking, but I've started to slow down because the weather is not as nice. In the week I've been out, I've walked 16 miles worth of laps around my pool. Added to the 11+ miles I did while I was in the hospital and that 27 miles in less than 2 weeks. Not bad for an invalid.

Also, I posted a couple of long blogs under the label "semi-related medical" which are regarding other medical things I've gone through that in some way ties into this whole UC thing. The one about my hands I had posted elsewhere but I figured I might as well post it here so it's all in one place since it could be a potential contributing cause.

-jk

I got home from the hospital yesterday, and the surgery went great. He didn't need to open me up through the large cut. He just went in through the hole where the stoma was, reattached everything and then closed that hole. After surgery there was much less pain than last time, although there was still a surprising amount, at least in part because they put me on morphine again which just doesn't work worth a damn for me. After I got them to cancel the morphine and put me on the pain medicine pump with Dilaudid where I can hit a button to control how much pain medicine I'm getting, I started feeling much better.

The next couple days were all about waiting for my intestines to wake up and start moving again. That got a little painful because gas starts to build up and parts of the intestines wake up before others resulting in you feeling like there's a lot going on in there, but nothing is really happening. I did a lot of walking to help speed this process which worked great.

Once everything was awake, I started eating, first liquid only diet, and then quickly moving on to soft foods. Now it's all about trying to figure out how my body wants to process foods and convincing it to do it in such a way that works well for me. My doctor described it as being like a baby learning to walk... things have been rearranged and I need to relearn how eating will affect me and what I need to do to get it to cooperate. My j-pouch only holds about 75 cc's of waste and over the next couple months, it'll supposedly stretch to hold 750 cc's of waste, so working through that process along with learning what and when to eat is the goal of the next couple months. Whereas after the last surgery the recovery was more about physical healing, this recovery is more about adapting and learning the new rules.

As I have said before, healing like this is really helped by walking, so in the hospital I did enough walking for a handful of patients. My surgery was over by 6:00pm and around midnight I was having the nurse walk 3 laps around the floor... a lap is a bit over 300 feet. That was Tuesday night. Saturday mid day I came home so I didn't get any walking in. The 3 days in between though, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I walked a bit over 11.5 miles worth of laps... in a hospital gown dragging an IV pole no less. Many nurses and hospital workers, and even other patients, commented on my walking. When asked what I could do to help things progress faster, doctors and nurses alike said "You're doing all the right things... keep up the walking and it'll happen soon enough."

I even met a really pretty nurse while I was in there that I got along with so well I asked her out despite the fact I was a patient in the hospital and FAR from looking my best. I've met a lot of pretty nurses in hospitals before and my brain was always on top of things enough to know that while you're in there you look like shit and feel like shit and the last thing you should be doing is trying to attract a love interest. She was so cool though that I decided that if I didn't say anything, I'd likely never see her again, so it was worth risking the fact that I was far from looking my best. Turns out she's married. Doh! Swing and a miss! Oh well, at least it's good to know that when I realize the effort is worth it, I'll step up to the plate and make an effort and I won't chicken out. Still, a happy ending would have been cool about now wouldn't it?

Anyway, things haven't all been smooth sailing. I won't go into details, but damn I've been in the bathroom a lot. Trying to figure out what your insides are doing and how to get them to work on your schedule is not an easy task.

-jk

In case I forgot to mention it, which I think I did, my TakeDown surgery is today. Actually I need to be at the hospital in about 90 minutes. I haven't eaten anything since Sunday dinnertime, nothing but clear liquids from then until 8:00AM this morning, and nothing at all, not even water after 8:00AM. Damn I'm hungry... and thirsty. A little over 3 hours until surgery.

So with any luck, the surgery will be short and completely successful. Not sure how long it'll take, it depends on whether there are any adhesions they need to remove and whether he needs to open me up through my big scar or whether he can do it all through the stoma hole.

Time in the hospital will vary depending on all those things, but I know he has me down for up to 5 days... hopefully it'll be less. Then it's home to recover for 4 - 8 weeks while my body learns how to cope with the substitute colon.

Anyway, just wanted to post a quick message for anybody following this. I'll be back in about a week. Wish me luck.

-jk