New member LIS surgery and fissurectomy yesterday

Hi. I had surgery for LIS and what I believe to be a fissurectomy. My CSR told my parents he needed to cut through some skin to get to the incision site. I had surgery for an abcess and fistula three months ago which caused this fissure. The fissure caused very little pain as long as I used nifedipine. However, my doctor said he did not believe it would heal and would become recurring. After both surgeries I was prescribed 2 tablespoons of MOM twice a day along with two doses of Metamucil. I am also on strong anti-infammatories and perkocet. After the first surgery I believe I went overboard on the MOM and developed diarrhea. Can anybody let me know what worked for them in keeping there stool soft after surgery. How much MOM would you recommend? MOM works better for me than colace and miralax. I just don't know how much to take. I am really dreading my first bowel movement as I had very little pain after bowel movements with the fissure and I am already feeling stinging and soreness that was not there with the fissure. Any advice regarding anything to do with surgery would be greatly appreciated!!

Welcome to the board Amber and congratulations on making it through the surgeries. Wow-you have been through a lot. I know when I was 22 I would have totally freaked having to face these problems so you are amazing!!!

I like MOM too but I getting the dosage down is tricky. You will have to play around with it. For some people 1 tbspoon is enough and others may need the full dose. I do half a dose of Miralx in the am and half a dose of MOM in the evening.

I also swear by All Bran Buds cereal. It doesn't taste very good but it does kind of give me a platform so that I can eat other foods because the fiber in that makes my BM the right consistency and helps to move everything else along.

If the MOM is too strong you might want to try Fish oil capsules or Flax seed oil. I use to take 1 tablespoon of flax seed oil in the am and one in the pm and that helped it slide right out.

A few of us take Digestive Advantage Chronic constipation capsules that has a softer kind of fiber plus probiotics your body needs to keep the flora of the intestines balanced which helps to promote regularity.

Take care!

i take 2 (100mg) stool softeners a day, and 1 tablespoon of MOM at night. This keeps things super soft and consistent. unfortunately i didn't discover this balance until a few months after my 2nd surgery - based on recommendations from this board i wish my surgeon had suggested it!

the first time i took 4 tablespoons and it was wayyy too much. i was going all day the next day. like lecia said, play around with the doses. maybe try a full 4 tablespoons the first time or two, and then gradually decrease it according to how your body reacts. if your surgeon recommended 2 tablespoons twice a day, that's a "full" dose over the course of one day. you might find that you only need it at night, to make you go in the morning.

it's not a science, so it may take awhile before you find what keeps you comfortable. good luck w/ recovery, and welcome to the board!

Thank ya'll so much for your advice. I've been reading the posts on this board ever since I was diagnosed with a fissure and finally decided to post because you are so supportive of eachother. I have strong family support, but they don't fully understand because they have not experienced anything like this before. Believe me, I've definitely done my share of freaking out. I woke up having a panic attack after the first surgery because they told me it was a more extensive surgery than they thought. Now I have attacks most of the times I go in for a check-up and I had one when I woke up yesterday. I am now on an antidepressant and xanax. This whole thing has been a nightmare. I have a bachelors degree in exercise science, so I've always been extremely conscious about the food I put in my body. However, I still have aays had problems with constipation. I graduated this summer by taking three classes in three months and then immediatedly started working in August. My grandma got hit by a drunk driver in September. I didn't eat like I should through all that and two weeks after my grandma got hit was when all of this started. I guess stress got my system all out of wack, and I'm already a natural worrier. Anyways, do you have any advice as to what foods to eat to keep my BMs soft. My grandma is getting me some prunes, grapes, and oranges. I've ate some activia yogurt and a bowl of oatmeal today and am about to eat some vegetable soup. Do you recommend anything else? I got really upset earlier, crying and stuff. The pain meds do that to me. I think I may have strained something. I'm experiencing more pain and still haven't gone to the bathroom. Last time I didn't have any real pain until I went to the bathroom. So I'm really scared of my first BM b/c I'm already hurting. I know this is long, rambling, and drawn out. I just needed to get some thoughts out of my head I guess. Thanks so much for your help and support!

Hi there,
I'm so sorry that you're in so much pain and going through all this emotional nightmare, we all know how awful you feel. Try to calm down and relax a bit, the pain will be worse when you stress out. Do something calming and relaxing and rest a lot and take care of yourself. After an operation you are going to feel very low, and these operations are about the most painful there is! At least its over now and things will get better even though it doesn't sem that way at the moment. The first bm afterwards IS scary-I nearly fainted in the bathroom, just at the thought of it, but, although its painful, its bearable, and it gets better each time. Dont resist the urge to go just because you're scared!
Have you tried flaxoil, aloe vera juice?
Wish you luck and a speedy recovery!

Val..How long ago was your surgery? How long did it take for recovery? What exactly did they do? This surgery seems more painful to me. I've needed to take more pain pills this time.

Sorry you are going through so much. I carry stress in my butt-some people get headaches-I get rectal pain. You need to give yourself some time to get through this and accept it will be hard but take it day by day. You will get over this. There are quite a few on here who have had surgeries and are doing so much better now and you will too.

It sounds like you know a lot about nutrition with your background. But it really takes going through something like this to make you watch everything you put in your mouth.

I would recommend All Bran Buds cereal, fruits, vegetables-high fiber foods. I think oatmeal is great. For me I can't eat citrus or tomatoes because they are slightly acidic and burn on the way out.

Have you tried taking ibuprofen rather than narcotics? Narcotics can make you very emotional and contribute to constipation. But you know your pain and what you need.

I know this board is kind of hard to wade through but there is a lot of great advice here about different supplements and foods to eat.

You will get better. Just take it day by day.

I have the All-Bran cereal and my grandma bought me plenty of fruits and veggies today. I have been crying all day long and fighting with everyone. I'm pretty sure it was from the combo of pain medicine. I'm going to continue the perkocet because it did not give me any problems last time and stop taking the other. I'm going to try and take ibuprofen tomorrow along with the perkocet. Today has just been a really bad day. I'm very discouraged from the pain and I haven't even had a BM yet. I know it takes a while to get over these surgeries. I was just too optimistic that this one would be less painful I guess. I'm feeling less emotional now. This board has really helped me get through today. Thankyou all so much.

I am sure part of it is coming off the anaestesia and the heavy duty post-op meds they give you.

I bet you this time next week you will be feeling so much better. Just rest and take it easy!

I woke up this morning in terrible pain. I finally crashed last night at 10:30 and didn't take any pain meds last night. This pain was worse than any pain I felt from the fissure. I also had a bad reaction with the toradol they gave me. I gained 10 pounds of water weight from it. My face was so swollen last night I looked deformed. I quit taking it around 12:00 yesterday and have lost 5 pounds of the water weight and am also feeling less emotional. However, I'm so frustrated and am really regretting this surgery. I know it's only day two, but my first surgery seemed so much easier. Maybe because the pain from the abcess and fistula was so terrible. The pain this morning almost reached that level. I still haven't had a BM and I am terrified. I wish I could be more optimistic about this, but I am really regretting it. I'm sorry I'm being so negative and hopefully ya'll are right and this time next week I will be feeling so much better. Please keep me in your prayers. I'm feeling really really down.

Amber,
Hang in there. I know there were times after my LIS that I had regretted the surgery, wished I hadn't done it, and I had pain and a horrible time with my first BM, as I became acutely constipated immediately after the surgery. I went through Hell, but from my current perspective I would still do it again.

Your worst week will be the first and you will see improvements soon. Keep your stools soft and fluffy.

I didn't like the toradal and stopped using it, too.

it sounds like you're in a lot of pain, so stopping the pain meds probably isn't an option for you. but from my experience, percocet was a bad idea. i took 4 over the course of the day after surgery and didn't have a BM for 3 or 4 days after that. needless to say i was freaking out and extremely irritable by then too. i cut out the narcotics immediately, and started taking 800mg of ibuprofen a couple times a day. this should help with the pain, but won't back up your system like prescriptions will.

it might help to drink some prune juice and take some milk of magnesia before you go to bed tonight. tomorrow when you wake up you should have a soft-runny BM. then hop right in the bath to soothe your butt. the worst thing to happen right now is to push out a hard BM. that happened to me right after my 2nd surgery and it had me in tears for a loooong time. you'll get thru these first few weeks soon, don't worry!!

I couldn't imagine not taking any pain pills. I just talked to my doctor's nurse. She said my muscles were spasming because I worked myself up?!? I thought that was what the surgery was for? I never had pain like this before. She also said it was okay not to have a BM yet as my entire body was put too sleep. She told me to do the MOM tonight too. I've taken it the last two nights though. I've also been eating prunes. I'm starting to feel like maybe I need to and I am terrified. I know I need to calm down. It's just so hard to do that.

When I had surgery last month I was so bound up for days. I was so bloated because I hadn't gone to the bathroom. It did come though. It is normal that things be delayed when you are getting over the effects from the GA.

Just follow their instructions and treat the pain. Don't wait until you are in despair before you take something because it will make it harder to catch up with the pain and just make you feel out of control. I am wondering if they could switch you to Vicodin. Percocet can really disagree with some people. I know it makes me feel really out of sorts so I had to call and ask for a different prescription.

Tkae the Xanax if you need to. Keep yourself comfortable as much as you can, take your baths and rest. Stay in bed and check in with us later. It might make it worse for you to sit at the computer.

If you read my surgery thread, you'll see I went though the same thing (except my spasms never came back) I was constipated for two or three days and it was awful. But I made it through and you will too.

The thread is called "Hugh: A perfect @ss" and it's long and buried way in the back pages, but you might get an idea that recovery is not so straightforward for some of us!

I would up taking laxatives and while they eventually got me back to where I needed to be, even that was problematic.