One of the Macmillan Online Community staff suggested I put these questions to the Ask a Nurse service.
The 'subject' box above gets to the key issue, so I won't go into a long history. I have LARS - Low Anterior Resection Syndrome - following surgery (stoma then reversal) in 2022, aggravated by pelvic radiotherapy (prostate cancer) later that year. This has meant chronic diarrhoea, some incontinence and frequent sleep disturbance, ever since. I am slowly cycling through treatment approaches with the aid of my hospital specialists, but am not really getting anywhere.
The only directly-relevant drugs spoken of are laperomide, which does very little for me, certainly at the low dosage that is all my GP feels happy with, and codeine phosphate, which many experts dislike but which can give me fairly reliable relief for 24 hrs at a time; however the body seems to habituate to both of these quite quickly. There does appear to be an alternative, diphenoxylate, known as Lomotil in the US and Co-phenotrope in the UK, where it appears to be regarded with concern and is not often used.
Is that it as far as pharmaceuticals are concerned? Irrigation, physiotherapy, diet management, probiotics, nerve stimulation, all could be helpful adjuncts, but I have the feeling that drugs are the 'bread-and-butter' response for me. Unless I go back to a stoma, which I really did not like.
Many thanks,
Viszla
