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Advice for my dad after Crohn's surgery

C

Crohns_son

Guest
Hi everyone,

I'm writing on behalf of my dad, who's in hospital at the moment, and had surgery last Thursday to remove a section of his stomach that had Crohn's.
We don't know anything about how common the experience he's going through is, and it would greatly reassure him to hear that other people have had similar experiences and are coming through it okay. I'd be extremely grateful for any responses that help in this regard.

He's 58 years old and was only diagnosed with Crohn's in the last couple of weeks. He's been in hospital now for about three weeks, and just before that had about a week in a different hospital while they tried to work out what was wrong with him.

Crohn's, in his case, is affecting the upper sections of his digestive system. His Crohn's seems to be characterised by lack of bowel movements rather than lots of loose bowel movements.
He had surgery on Thusday last week to remove a section of diseased stomach, and also nodules from where the smaller intestine meets the larger intestine.

After surgery he was on morphine, but reacted badly to that - nightmares, hallucinations, paranoia. It was the same pain he'd had before the surgery, more or less. He was switched on to a painkiller calld Tramadol, and another one called Bucopan.

Then five days after the operation, he stopped fasting - he had two cups of tea, a glass of water and a probiotic yogurt. That night he started to have severe pains, but in a slightly different area to before - albeit in the same stomach section. The doctors reckon its a combination of healing pains and a build-up of fluid as a result of what he consumed. In other words, I guess his digestive system isn't functioning yet, in that what he's consuming isn't getting past his stomach.

They have put tubes back down his nose, which took the pressure off his stomach and allowed the fluids he'd consumed to drain.

He has been given Diafen, also for pain, intermittently. It lasts for about 18 hours and he says it's pretty good.

He's having a CT scan today to work out why he's so distended/swollen. He's not consuming fluids at the moment other than through a drip due to his bad reaction to tea, water and yogurt the other day.

I'm really looking to find out if anyone else has had similar experiences to him. Hopefully this will reassure him, as he's been feeling very down - in particular yesterday, when he suffered severe pains after consuming some fluids for the first time. I've never seen him so down.

Has anyone out there been throuh anything similar?

Cheers,

Jeff
 
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