Problems with low anterior resection syndrome

Hi . I’m sorry to hear that your husband is having such a rotten with LARS and having chemo is probably not helping. Loperamide/immodium is usually recommended for loose stools but it’s finding a balance which doesn’t constipate him. My friend suffers from constipation after her op and swears by a glass of prune juice in a morning to get things going. On the other side of things marshmallows, jelly babies and wine gums are good for firming things up.

Could you perhaps give his colorectal nurse a ring for advice? I know the oncologists like to know if any medication is being taken alongside a patients chemo so I think it’s best to go to them for advice. 

Hope things start to improve soon

Take care

Karen x

Thank you Karen for the response. We have reached out to his surgeon and when he has been constipated they just tell him to do mirlax. His surgeon is oblivious to his situation. We were told nothing about LARS before his surgery and upon coming out of surgery he told my husband that his bowels shouldn't really change much. Then his first follow up visit two weeks after his surgery and my husband told him about the pain down there and it makes him feel like he has to push, he said "why are you bearing down? you shouldn't need to", my husband tried to explain that he couldn't help it when this rectal spasm occurs. So a couple months after that when he continued to have problems with this we went back in and he finally said, oh what you are experiencing is Low anterior resection syndrome, we were very upset because we already knew about all of this from research and thankfully these forums. His 

That's good to know about marshmallows, but I don't know what jelly babies or wine gums are, if you could let me know.

Hi . Seems strange that the surgeon told your hubby that nothing would change - mine told me that things would never go back to how they were but I would get used to a new normal. Is he still on any medication that may be adding to the problem? I know codeine can slow things up. I think it’s the gelatine in jelly babies and wine gums that firm things up. I’m sat here looking at a bag of giant marshmallows which my husband bought me (aka small pillow size) and the ingredient list contains pork gelatine!

I really hope things start to settle down for him in the near future

Take care

Karen x

I know we really liked his surgeon but when he started having issues and he seemed oblivious to the "after" surgery effects. We did a lot of research and knew all of this so the last appointment we saw him for his rectal spasms and pain we knew what it was called but we wanted to see if he would even mention it, well he did but again, why didn't he tell us this before surgery or even after when he was experiencing it, it was almost like he doesn't really deal with it much I don't know. We were told about medications to help with the tenesemus pain but he wasn't familiar with it at all, so we went to his gastrointerologist and thankfully he knew about it and prescribed the medication for the spasms. So in the end his surgeon basically said finally that he needs to work on getting his bowels firm and the alternative to his "issues" would be a colostomy bag.

No he does not take any type of pain medication other than advil or tylenol. Thanks for the explanation on the jelly babies and wine gums. Normally his stool is soft, not diarrhea but not firm either, so we were doing fiber supplements but it seemed after awhile it was making things worse, more bowel movements in a day with more clustering. It is so frustrating and I feel so bad for him, he definitely gets discouraged very easily. Thanks for listening Karen