The first thing that you should know about colitis surgery is that not every patient suffering from the colitis disease needs it. However, some patients do end up requiring colitis surgery and this entails the removal of the patient’s large intestine. While the reasons for this are varied, the trepidation that the patient goes through at the idea of having an organ removed from the body is fairly common.
Why Surgery?
Colitis surgery is generally undertaken after the colitis symptoms in the patient reach an uncontrollable stage. Surgery would require the patient to be admitted in a hospital, and would also involve high doses of powerful steroids being administered into the patient’s body when other means of controlling the loss of blood and diarrhea have failed.
The Operation
The actual operation can take four or five hours, during which the diseased colon is extracted. This is required to form a stoma or ‘ileostomy’; which then serves as the bowel’s end point for the body’s excreta. The ileostomy’s end is actually the end of a small bowel that is introduced into the body through an incision made on the wall of the abdomen. This then sticks out by around 2-4 centimeters and a bag is then attached around the surrounding skin in order to collect the body’s excreta.
Post Surgery
Once the surgery is over, the patient would normally feel sore internally as well as from the external surgical wound. Since the bowel would have to be inspected and handled it would feel quite ‘raw’, but the good thing is that it wouldn’t be operational immediately. Also, since the surgery is a major one, the small intestines enter an abeyance period, and it could take a few days before they start to function normally again.
The ileostomy remains for sometime allowing the body to heal before any further surgery is undertaken. This period varies from patient to patient and primarily takes into account the patient’s health at the time of his/her admission to the hospital. While a number of older patients choose to keep the ileostomy, one should know that this isn’t the only option.
The ‘J Pouch’
A further option involves more surgery which results in the formation of a ‘J Pouch’ which is made using the small intestine, and this is an internal area that is used to collect the patient’s excreta, thereby doing away with the need for the ileostomy.
When treatment for colitis involves surgery, one must know that the process can include more than one operation, and the formation of the ileostomy can be permanent or temporary. The anxiety that a patient goes through during this period not only includes anxiety about the surgery but also about how he/she would cope with the changes in the days to come. Questions that are commonly put forth include how one would feel without having a large colon, how wearing a bag would affect day-to-day life, how the patient’s diet would be affected, etc.
With answers to these questions, the patient can ensure that the period immediately after the surgery, as well as living with a J Pouch or an ileostomy, can be made considerably easier, simply by knowing just what to expect, thereby also taking away most anxiety related problems.
