Re: Ileum,cecum

From: Rebecca Tucker (rjtucker@peoplepc.com)
Sun Oct 29 13:28:16 2006


Hi Susan, So sorry to hear you're having adhesion problems. I'm not sure this will help, but I have had severe problems with inflammatory bowel disease requiring transfusions due to adhesions interfering with circulation. I have

lost all of my large bowel and some small bowel. I now have an anastomosis from the remaining small bowel to the rectum. Unfortunately, due to the inflammatory problems, I develop scar tissue inside the intestine as well as

in the abdominal cavity. A motility specialist and colo-rectal surgeon at Cedar Sinai Medical Center in California was able to not only perform an adhesiolysis with my last surgery in December, (9th belly surgery) but was also able to scope the intestine at the same time and found three full internal obstructions from adhesions inside the intestine. He was able to excise the three areas of internal scar tissue and do pathology on them which resulted in a report that they had not seen anything like this before.

In all the x-rays I've had during all the ER visits for "episodes" of severe

abdominal pain and inability to have BMs, the results were always just "dilated loops of bowel." Since the bowel wasn't technically twisted or kinked due to the external adhesions, it was never realized that I was actually having bowel obstructions from an internal mechanical means. I thought for a long time that I was absolutely crazy and that these "episodes" must be a result of severe stress, or something. I put myself through hell, as I'm sure we all do at some point.

I ended up on TPN for 2 1/2 years and Fentanyl/Morphine pump for the same amount of time. As you can imagine, I was totally and hopelessly physically addicted by the time I was seen at Cedar Sinai. The withdrawals and ultimate

cessation of opiate pain meds was more difficult that anything I've ever been through. However, the pain was so great from the adhesions that there really was no choice. For those of you who use frequent or constant opiate pain control, there is a new drug out called Suboxone which works like Methadone, however, it's short term only and can be used repeatedly for on-again, off-again pain control such as ours


Enter keywords:
Returns per screen: Require all keywords: