Bum Briefing #16

It’s been awhile since the last update, with the holiday’s and recovery time has definitely gotten away from us. This update might be a tad graphic with poo so those with weak stomachs might want to shy away from the later parts. Just take heed that early detection is the only way to avoid this, get your butts checked out! 

The surgery went well, and I learned an important lesson I didn’t fully grasp until now. Assume surgeons are speaking literally. I asked mine what to expect when I get out of post-op and she said “oh you’ll have a small ‘bullet hole’ we call it with a purse string suture.” I assumed that’s what my scar would look like, nope, I had an actual hole in my stomach when I woke up. It’s closed up now but it was quite the shock to wake up to at first.  Like Beth mentioned in the last update I had somewhere between a 10-100% chance of getting another ileus. Well that was definitely 100%, it wasn’t as bad as my first one but it definitely wasn’t pleasant. I was bloated as a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade with little relief aside from the occasional burp. Bowels can be very temperamental and mine seem to be exceptionally so. The only things you can do to help the process along are get up and walk, and suck on hard candy like Jolly Ranchers. Well let me tell you, walking around a hospital in the covid era has to be one of the most boring experiences ever. You get two hallways intersecting in the middle and that’s it. You can’t go anywhere else. 

When your bowels shut off they fire back up in their own way. The best way to describe it is when you replace your fridge water filter and need to bleed the air out. Yeah, I became the human incarnation of that. At first it wasn’t too bad, they were able to measure and inspect everything to discharge me on Monday. That meant this stay was just over 5 days, much better than the 11 I was before. I was not prepared for what happened when we arrived home, what happened was like something out of Dante’s Inferno. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse proceeded to stampede from my backside, laying waste to our home’s septic system and made me question my own humanity. For unexplainable reasons the floodgates of hell were opened and the damned, liquified souls of everything I ate cried as they burned through my sphincter and into the watery abyss below. With the little strength I could muster I sent a MyChart message to my doctor informing them of the carnage happening and what I should do, to which I got a reply “Hydrate”. 

Now there is one piece of advice for this stage of the game, redo your restroom in motivational pictures. Ones with slogans like, courage is fear hanging on one minute longer, the only easy day was yesterday, pain is fear leaving the body, etc. While I was no longer an upside down Mount Vesuvius it has now evolved into a constant assault on my sphincter. The soldiers are no longer regrouping for a full battalion assault. It is now just one after another of lowly infantrymen. I decided I needed to start recording the events because the doctors ask and I naively guessed, yeah maybe 8-10 times. I was way off, my worst days are over double that and they continue to this day. The only comfort I have is the doctors saying “It’ll get better” but much like the ileus there is no timeline. I just need to stay hydrated, moisturized and occasionally take Imodium, although taking Imodium feels like bringing a knife to a gunfight.