Community Forum

Hey all,

Firstly just wanted to say it is great that we have a forum here to bring us all together and to discuss all our issues with these diseases.

My story- basically in the past I have had diarrahoea on and off. Sometimes the stools were hard, sometimes they were not- and came out half hard half soft. My appetite in mornings was always low and I often found myself going to the toilet soon after dinner. Funny thing is though, the colour of the stools looked normal enough after going after dinner, even though I had just eaten dinner (un-digested food is green from the unprocessed stomach acid)...so I was not exactly sure what was going on- perhaps it was pushing food from before through or I had some weird digestive pattern going on- anyway- the long and short of it was- it was not that bad, and I had gotten used to it so it wasnt that much of a problem- I did not find that I was running to the toilet all the time, there was just diarrahoea on and off, and like said- not all that watery at times.

At the start of this year however I went to the toilet here at work and noticed that I did a really funny stool- it was greenish and looked like mushed rice. I thought it was food poisoning, so I had some appointments with gastro and eventually went to hospital- I was having cold sweats and pain near my appendix area. The hospital, after doing some CT scans, found a perforation in my bowel....but , it wasnt a hole obviously (would go into emergency surgery for that), it was more like a grazed section of the bowel that came from this increased bout of diarrahoea and strange stools. It was up in the air as to whether this was appendicitis or not. They gave me a lot of flagyl which brought the mass down which they felt in the appendix area and allowed me to go home. I felt better, pain went down,  and when I came home on a little bit of Flagyl I did a normal stool- I felt like I had won the lottery!

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 Reply posted for JimmyF.

Hmm not sure why that posted out of order- from above (First post being number 1)- please read the posts in the following order: 1,4,3,2- thanks and sorry for the confusion.

 Reply posted for JimmyF.

Is taking panadeine forte good in that it makes constipation- possibly helping the recovery process of surgery?

Given my story- is it normal to have a pain in the lower right hand corner (where I had my operation- right hand colectomy).....for 1 month and a bit after surgery? The pain is like a stabbing pain with a pencil. It comes and goes. Worse when moving when the pain does it. is it trapped gas or just the bowel getting used to the new connection or section of bowel?

I have read a few stories here and i see people have various different circumstances and I am sorry for all of us that have varying degrees of these conditions, but if any help can be thrown my way of these few questions it would be highly appreciated.

Take care,

Jimmy F

 Reply posted for JimmyF.

This surgery happened about a month and a half ago. I got released on Flagyl (metadrozanole or however you spell it)- 3 a day for 3 months- to come back for a check up then, then a colonscopy to check up in 3 months after that check up date to see if Crohn's has flared up.

As it stands i am taking my Flagyl and the food seems to be holding in my system pretty good at lunch time and dinner times throughout the night, although mornings seem to be worse for me (i eat breakfast and have to go to the toilet, but sometimes I dont know if this is breakfast coming out or dinner the night before , know what I mean- although usually I go once before I go to work then I have to go again shortly after I come to work, I am assuming the second time breakfast is passing through a little bit early)

Diarrahoea was increased a week or so ago, but I am takign Panadeine Forte which constipates things up a bit which is what I need- Is this a good idea?

My stools are sometimes half hard half soft, sometimes greenish (like a mustard colour) sometimes more brownish. The best I can get is hardish stools, brown, but they all come out in small pebbles. Also I am getting some pain sometimes while walking (annoying when you have to go to the car or need to go to the toilet- you know you have to walk to go to the toilet but it is painful going there- and when you have to go you have to go!- does not help when you need to walk fast before you have an accident).

This is a long post and my first post but wanted to get this story off my chest. Guess my main questions are (to land the plane here)

-Questions in next post-

 Reply posted for JimmyF.

Unfortunately the symptoms came back and now I was having pretty bad stomach cramps for 2 hours at night time at a time- also having cold sweats and fevers at night. One morning the stabbing pain in my appendix was too great, so back to hospital this was. This was hard for me as hospital the first time was hard (but then again , who likes hospital) but it is one of those things that had to be done. I had a colonscopy done in which they took out some sections of my bowel as a bi-opsy. The results were inconclusive although people were speculating that i was indeed Crohn's. The interesting thing was that they thought this was appendicitis as well- the CT scan showed an abcess in the area- appendix was a bit inflammed as well.

They told me if I had Crohn's it was too risky to do an operation  due to the nature of the bowel being too weak to join up. However, eventually I did go into surgery and the surgeon explained to me that usually we treat appendicitis differently for people with Crohn's but since the inflammation of the bowel spread to some of my intestine across-ways and they cut out some more bowel- they were able to do a clean join and recontruction of my bowel.

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