Three weeks ago, I started feeling very bad, with vomiting after every meal or drink. This was happening seven months after my colostomy surgery.
After a week of daily vomiting, I became so weak that I passed out just before entering the taxi that was going to take me to the ER. Thank God for my wife, who helped me through all that.
I entered the ER with hyponatremia (low sodium in the blood, or low electrolytes in the blood) because of all the vomiting.
After an X-ray and an MRI, doctors decided I should get operated on because of intestinal adhesions from the previous colostomy surgery. All went relatively well until now; I'm still recovering as this second surgery was essentially the same as the first one, except for the cutting and pulling of the colon out.
The message I want to relay is this: if you are programmed for a colostomy, try to get an anti-adhesions gel or substance that the surgeon(s) can put inside your abdomen before closing it, in order to minimize the formation of such unwanted adhesions in the future.
In addition to that, leaving the draining tube in for a week or so more after leaving the hospital may also help, as could physiotherapy (abdominal massage). A private doctor told me this; he said that the draining tube should be left in until there is no more liquid draining through it (because the wound will heal while there will still be liquid needing to come out).
In my case, the surgeon removed the draining tube three days after surgery, and it turned out that half a cup of yellowish liquid started bursting through one of the stitches on my abdomen surgery eleven days after surgery.
If you're not sure that what I said is true, just ask your surgeon about it - I don't really know if it is true or not either, but one thing I know now is that I really, really don't want a third adhesions-removing surgery.
God bless.
