recovering from surgery

Hi

When I was on chemo my output got out of control and several things helped. You may already be doing all of these so forgive me if I am stating the obvious to you. 

1. Be careful what you drink and how much. Obviously you don't want to get dehydrated but the more you drink the more you will produce in your bag, there is a balance to be struck. Caffeine is bad as it increases output so try to cut down on this and go decaff if you can. Also dioralyte or the equivalent helps slow things as it gives you the salts you need. Avoid things like fresh orange juice and beer, they make it worse.

2. Chat to your stoma team or GP, I upped my loperamide significantly, I think you can double your dosage if necessary from 8 to 16 per day but do check first, I might have remembered that wrong. Codeine also slows down input significantly and I went on them regularly until it all slowed down a bit.

3. I expect you know about the joys of mashed potato and marshmallows and gelatin sweets but full fat rice pudding, greek yogurt and a bag of crisps per day are also recommended. The crisps have the salts that you need which you pass into the bag when everything goes through you too quickly.

If you can slow the stoma down then the food will stay in you for longer and you are more likely to absorb what you need from it. Just stay on that low fibre diet and hopefully it will settle soon.

Nicky

Hi nothappyanymore

Sorry to hear that you’re struggling. You’ve had some great advice from Nicky and I’ve attached a booklet below which may have a few suggestions.

https://bowelcancerorguk.s3.amazonaws.com/Publications/EatingWell_BowelCancerUK.pdf

It may be worth seeing your GP as there are some little high calorie drinks that they can prescribe you - they’re about the size of those Actimel drinks - some taste better than others but they’re worth trying to get a few more calories in. Also try and add calories in where you can eg. Butter and cheese in mash potato, full fat yoghurt, apple crumble and custard - my dad’s apple crumble really thickened my output!

It might also be helpful to measure how much you are actually drinking. It’s recommended to drink 6-8 glasses a day but my husband found that my 2 big cups of tea that I start the day with were not far short of a litre on their own. I was given a smaller mug and then he used to make up a bottle of squash and that was my limit for the day!

Have a chat with the stoma nurses about loperamide and don’t be scared to up the quantity if you need to - it’ll slow the transit of food through your bowel and hopefully let you absorb more nutrients and put some weight.

Have you also posted this on the Ileostomy Support Board? Ian aka is the resident expert in all things stoma 

https://community.macmillan.org.uk/cancer_experiences/ileostomy_and_colostomy_discussions/

Hope things start to improve for you.

Take care

Karen x

Hi Nicky

thanks for your reply pretty much done or doing everything you say apart from upping the Loperaminde in fact I have come off it the last couple of days as it wasn't making any difference , it takes about 15 minutes after I have eaten before I can hear the bag filling, which I think is the main problem 

thanks 

Darren