Day 12 - Need Poop Advice!

[mhfein]

Hi Everyone,
It's day 12 since my Vertical Banded Gastroplasty Revision to DS surgery with Dr. K. in Delano. I am doing great in all respects except one.

Before I request the help of this most august board, let me first say hi to HorseLover44. I was your nextdoor hospital mate at Delano and have been thinking of you and sending you lots of good wishes. Hope that "hit by a truck" feeling is going away by now.

So. Here's the poop, and I do mean poop. Since Day 6 or so I have had bad diarrhea. I was eating sugar free stuff. Saw the amazing a fabulous (bowing down in gratitude) Dr. K on day 10 and he said my diarrhea was not normal. He said take Pepto Bismol, don't eat any fake sugar whatsoever. He set me free to eat from the big list (chicken, crackers, tuna, etc).

So now I am trying to eat whole food. Seems reasonable, eat solid things to stop diarrhea, right? Last night I had chicken, got down 1/4 breast, was proud of it! Jello and FABULOUS Yoplait new vanilla Greek Yogurt to-totally-die-for. (Thank you KelliBlue!)

The diarrhea is not getting less. I cannot be more than 20 steps from a bathroom. How does a person go back to work with this? BUT I do seem to be getting a little more control. Fewer accidents, more often making it in time.

SO HERE ARE MY QUESTIONS:
1) What is your experience? Is this normal for the first 2 weeks or so? I imagine living with this forever and it scares me to death. I just need some reassurance. Did others experience this?

2) What should I eat to get through this as fast as as possible?

3) Pepto Bismol? It says take every 1 hour, but I took every 1 day. Did anyone ever try this? Does it work.

4) Anything else that might work? Any special foods that help?

5) I have not even begun to think about protein drinks. Are they going to help or hurt here? Which ones are best for this situation?

6) I just really want to hear, "Have patience, this will be gone soon." Listening for the lovely sound of your reassurances and great information! Where would I turn if our wonderful proboards community were not together here to help one another?

[mhfein]

Boy if I had just waited one day to post this. Within 24 hours everything got better. I see light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks to all of you who read this, and even though no one replied, I understand I was asking some hard questions and probably just everyone is different so close post surgical. Doing much better now. Thanks.

[KathyF]

I am glad your problem resolved. Thing is, this sort of thing will come and go as your intestines heal from being sliced and diced and as you add more foods to your diet. Hope it all goes smoothly for you from here on out!

[Leonie]

I am glad it is going so much better. Yes, I was hoping the revisionistas would respond.
I was expecting loose bowels, so it did not bother me all that much, but I had your kind of experience while on Augmentin antibiotics. It was terrible. Be assured, it passed. Now I add some extra cream to make keep things soft.

I would suggest trying an unflavoured Whey Isolate Protein Powder. Add some to the yoghurt, mix with water, cocoa, soup, peanut butter or whatever you can tolerate. The light, bland flavour really works for me.

I had egg drop soup with extra shrimps as one of my first 'real' meals. I could not stop sipping, it was so delicious.

[Paula]

Im a revisionista and I do apologize for not seeing this sooner. I would have responded, but I forget to check in the revision section as often as I do the DS section. Im an RNY to DS revision, but think our experiences should be somewhat similar enough for comparison purposes. Since your issues seem to have lightened up for you, maybe this will help a lurker out there who might be wondering the same thing

Its normal to have funky poo for the first month or so. I saw the gamut of colors and consistencies during my post-op healing period, complete with varying degrees of stinky that went along with it. Ill say that in the beginning, I did have more incidents of orange oil slicks in the toilet with too much fat in the diet...but that has tapered off tremendously and I hardly ever see those little orange slicks anymore. I can honestly say that it will get better, though Ive noticed with me if I get a little too carb-y, that is when I can usually guarantee Im going to have a bout of what I call lava poo. And yes, it literally does feel like my ass is spewing lava much like Kilauea does in Hawaii. But thats the outlying extreme.

I dont really think there is going to be anything in particular you can eat to get through this little stage in the healing process. Intestines dont like being screwed with and the DS does a number on them...so our innards are bound to be slightly pissed off at us for a little bit. Gotta give the intestines their pout time so they can put on their big intestine pants and get over it. Again, it does honestly get better as the healing process becomes further along.

Protein is huge. For both keeping your body from wanting to eat its own muscles/organs to get the protein that it needs AND importantly enough for the healing process that you are going through. With you already having a VSG the first time around, Im thinking that the reintroducing new foods to your sleeve thing isnt the same for you as it was for me. But Im of the opinion that protein shakes cant really do anything to hurt you, they can only help. Best protein is going to be a whey protein isolate. I had problems with concentrate or mix (combination of concentrate and isolate), so my go-to fave protein shake mix was Isopure. If you can, you can always order samples from Vitalady to see what your taste might be before committing to buying a big tub of something and then finding out it makes you want to hurl.

I never did the Pepto thing, but if Dr. K says its a good idea...Id for sure go with that. Not sure what the dosing should ideally be on this though, so I cant really answer that question.

Have patience to get through this period of your journey. It will honestly get better.

[mhfein]

Hi Paula
Thanks so much for your assurances that what I am going through is NORMAL. That ma kes a big difference to me especially keeping my mind out of the "It'll be like this forever" trench.

Now almost 3 wks out accidents getting rarer - control and time to run those 15 steps to the toilet better and better.

Now I get times of day that are not intestine driven. Like the whole new system is just resting and will talk to me later-even as much as 6 hours later. I think normal poop- patterns are one to 2 wks away.

Anyway Paula- thanks so much!

Mary Helen

[chicarita]

Sooooo normal. Sugar (fake or real) and too much fat, for me, make it worse.

Hang in there, you'll figure this all out. Time is your best friend right now...



Sent from my iPad using ProBoards

[bearmom]

I'm glad you are doing better. It's a hard balance when you are early out and your news guts are angry, and you have so much liquid and pain killers fighting a battle over whether you poop nonstop or not at all.

Just so you know, the lack of replies wasn't personal, it was just unfortunate timing as many of us were gone on a holiday weekend getting in the last spasm of summer.

[mhfein]

Thanks so much your replies are gentle rains from heaven. - its hard to tell what might be making things worse when things are already so bad from the start. So i have stayed on Dr K.'s list for the first month. I have added little things tiny amounts here and there and nothing about my intestines is any different. I'm really enjoying food a lot. What a plus. And today 19 lbs lighter - my recliner seems to have gotten much bigger!