Constant need to go to toilet

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Hello. My father - who is 91 - was diagnosed with bowel cancer just after Christmas. It's situated fairly near the end of the large colon. The consultant said that it had reached the lymph nodes but had not spread further, which is a relief. For logistic reasons, he's been referred to another hospital, which happens to be in the town where I live, as cancer treatment does not happen at his local hospital. He's currently waiting to see the next consultant in my local hospital on 10th Feb but is still living in his own home for the moment (two hours away).

In the meantime, however, my poor dad is plagued with urgent calls to go to the toilet throughout the day - ten times, sometimes - more often than not just passing mucus and blood with no stools - and no way to hold it in. It seems to be triggered a few minutes after he eats or drinks anything. My dad is otherwise physically fit, competent and eats a very well balanced diet with plenty fruit and veg. He loves walking but doesn't dare go out anywhere. He can just about make it to the corner shop to fetch his daily paper.

Is this usual? Should he just put up with it until he sees the consultant or should he speak to someone at his GP surgery?

Thanks.

Gemmary over 3 years ago

Hi, Scrabble96, I think it might be worth trying the consultant or secretary just to check if there is anything he could take to help. Failing that your GP.. I got to up to 6 to 8 times a day, so appreciate how miserable it can be. And no I didn't go far! But it did improve slowly. The only thing else I can suggest is to back off the fibre for a few days, just to see if that helps. Between my diagnosis and the operation, a month, I basically had to be on a low fibre diet, which continued after the operation, with a phased in introduction of different fibre foods.

Hope you find some help! Take care.

Scrabble96 over 3 years ago in reply to Gemmary

Thanks, Gemmary . I've arranged to call him tomorrow morning to see how he's got on overnight. The original consultant said that he would recommend a course of radiotherapy and chemotherapy before the operation, so that could be several weeks of rushing to the loo. He recently stopped taking Senna tablets at night, after taking them every night for at least a year (I think he was originally prescribed these incorrectly for constipation rather than the stenosis he had; that had to be dealt with just before Christmas so that they could do a colonoscopy and biopsy) but the leaflet says quite explicitly that they shouldn't be taken with a stenosis or for longer than a couple of weeks! He's understandably absolutely fed up.