Changes in Bowel Movements After General Anesthesia

I've had my colostomy for about 11 years. It is a low cut loop colostomy on the left side. My stools have always been basically pretty formed. I got away with just drinking a glass of prune juice at breakfast and occasionally asking for Milk of Mag. A year ago, I had surgery for a kidney stone. After the general anesthesia, my bowels were not moving in the hospital, so they started me on Milk of Mag one day and Lactulose the next day. I continued on this after I left the hospital, and my stools were still formed. In July, I had another surgery for a kidney stone again with general anesthesia. After I got back to the nursing home, my stools were formed for a little while and then the regimen I was on started not working. My stools also became sort of mushy... not formed. Now, six months later, I'm on Senna. I usually have to take five Senna a night to get any results... and even with that, I take Milk of Mag a couple of times a week. I also stink now... which I NEVER did before. I'm just wondering if there's any chance I will ever go back to my stools being formed and non-stinky again?!?! Anybody out there had a similar experience? Any advice? Sure hope there's some help somewhere!!! Thank you all and bless you!

Hi, welcome to the site and the forum - don't worry we not just a dating site, we also help each other out a great deal just by asking and answering questions. Yours is not one I can answer as I have an ileostomy, but you can bet someone on here will be able to! Take care, Rachel

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Thanks for your warm welcome! After reading over the forum, I had gathered that you were more than a dating site.
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I think this is a great place where people sharing the same problems can possibly get some advice. Do you know if my question will be automatically forwarded on to an ostomy nurse? I'm in a nursing home, but we don't have an ostomy nurse here. I would love to talk to one. Good to "meet" you!

Hi again - you might find that the nurses read the forum and jump in - not too sure on that one. There is a bit on the home page that says 'find ET nurses' which gives a link to nurses from who you can request assistance. Hope that helps a bit? Rachel x

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The following information is owned and maintained by WOCN (Wound Ostomy and Continence Nurses Society).

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Any change in meds? Sometimes that can do it. Also, bananas, toast, and potatoes—starchy carbs—will increase the bulk of your bowel movements. Antibiotics cause loose stools. Does any of this ring a bell?
eddie

Tips on Hernia Prevention with Collin | Hollister

When you mention anesthesia, you are waving a red flag in front of me. I go psychotic, and I mean, really! When I had my surgery, all of my nurses became witches preparing to kill me. This is what they did to me. They set my room on fire and it filled with smoke. They leaned over my bed and cackled at me, each betting the other on how long I would remain alive. They were deciding which among them was going to go and get the body bag. They read obituaries on their computer to me and asked if I knew so-and-so and yes, I did, and yes, they were dead. I remember screaming "Help me" over and over; finally convinced that I was going to die, I prepared myself, praying to God to take me to heaven so that I could be with my parents and husband again. I remembered that heaven was going to be a place of joy unspeakable and I was able finally to relax in the burning room with the witches roaming all over the place. One of them scolded me for trying to pull out my "pic-line" (?). But worst of all, when I woke up and it was morning, not ONE of them had the courtesy to apologize for their terrible behavior of the night before. It was so real I actually changed hospitals.

Oh what an awful time you must have had.... I sometimes get a bit odd with morphine, but not so much that I hallucinate like that, just talk a load of rubbish... that must have been really frightening, you poor thing ...... Generally after an anaesthetic I wake up starving, they give me a sip of water but what I really want is a roast beef dinner with all the trimmings!

MaryA, I can totally empathize with you. When I landed up in the hospital, very ill and not even sure at what stage I was in (because I had two ops), at one point they had put me in an MRI room, which was darkened. I knew that those two bastards were going to kill me. I could hear them planning it. When the MRI was over, they told me not to move as they wanted to do another test. I knew what that meant, so I jumped off the table. They told me not to move because I had a catheter in, so I yanked it out, blood flying, and they called in security to hold me down until a doctor came and did me in. Shortly after all this happened, my wife and daughter were at the cafeteria, and one of the guys in a white uniform was telling a coworker about somebody in MRI who flipped his lid and they had to call in security. As my wife and daughter were leaving, my daughter walked over and told them, "That was my father you were talking about." I guess she got some red faces. In any event, when I next came to (eight days later), in ICU, sure enough, there was a nurse who was just waiting to do me in. Of course, this was all a hallucination, but as one nurse told me, they can be more real than reality. Later, I began having, well, not bad hallucinations, like watching my two little dogs running around inside of a wall clock, having a good time. I will quit babbling for now.
We are not alone!
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MaryA, I can totally empathize with you. When I landed up in the hospital, very ill and not even sure at what stage I was in (because I had two ops), at one point they had put me in an MRI room, which was darkened, and I knew that those two bastards were going to kill me. I could hear them planning it. When the MRI was over, they told me not to move as they wanted to do another test. I knew what that meant, so I jumped off the table and they told me not to move because I had a catheter in, so I yanked it out, blood flying, and they called in security to hold me down until a doctor came and did me in. Shortly after all this happened, my wife and daughter were at the cafeteria and one of the guys in a white uniform was telling a coworker about somebody in MRI who flipped his lid and they had to call in security. As my wife and daughter were leaving, my daughter walked over and told them, "That was my father you were talking about." I guess she got some red faces. In any event, when I next came to (eight days later), in ICU, sure enough, there was a nurse who was just waiting to do me in. Of course, this was all a hallucination, but as one nurse told me, they can be more real than reality. Later, I began having, well, not bad hallucinations, like watching my two little dogs running around inside of a wall clock, having a good time. I will quit babbling for now.
We are not alone!
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Thank you, Ed. I am not alone. I appreciate your remark that they (hallucinations) can be more real than reality, because mine were. I really did move from that hospital to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics to get away. I wasn't in top shape when I arrived there; I thought the U of I hospital was a warehouse and I was being kept in a storage room, and I kept calling for a nurse so I could call the sheriff to come and get me out. My son told me I had to stay put. I said I wanted to leave, and he said, "No." I couldn't believe that he would abandon me, but eventually I came out of it. I remember reading a magazine article about President Obama and his family, his two girls, and his son David. I thought for several days about David before I realized there was no David. So real. I will do anything to avoid going through that again.
Good for you, Ed, for showing them you meant business!
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Maryallison, Hi again, since I posted the above I asked my wife when did all this happen, the thing in the MRI, and she said it was before the operations and this was 2003. It was something I didn't want to dwell on too much, but what I have done was make it a point to talk to people who had surgery and talk about hallucinations. The last man I talked to had told me he didn't remember much, except the terrible hallucinations, and he would remember them until he died, which came early to him, really broke me up. Now I have to say I'm not a religious person and on the day I woke up in ICU it was Easter Sunday and I could hear this organ music playing, scared the hell out of me, then one of the nurses brought out this mechanical rabbit that did a little dance and sang a song and that brought me back to reality for a short time and then I was out again. Next time I came to, that same nurse asked me if there was something wrong and I told her about another nurse who was trying to kill me, after that she was always there, keeping me calm, telling me what was real and what wasn't. But it was so real, and now I've gone to three ops and never wanted to see another surgeon as long as I lived, but that was not to be. Within a year something went wrong and here's a surgeon telling me I have to have surgery right away so I told him about my past experiences and he said don't worry it won't happen, believe me, he said. I did, and I came through it without those terrible hallucinations. Which, I think, begs the question, why aren't patients given some kind of warning about what they might encounter after surgery, good question to end on. Ed

Hey everyone, these stories are terrifying!
I feel for y'all having gone through that.
It's weird, but I had a lot of hallucinations from the morphine, but nothing bad, just funny, stupid things like I would be "typing on my laptop" up in the air or petting my dog that was on the bed, or my pet raccoon on my bed (WTF, I have no raccoon), or I would wave at people who aren't there. I always kinda knew I was hallucinating, so that was funny, and I remember feeling embarrassed when I would do it.
I am shocked I didn't have bad ones because I still have night terrors when I am stressed out. I have had many times where I have tried to fight off dead people or coax a monkey over to feed it...YES...it freaks my boyfriend out a little. lol I have done this and been a sleepwalker since I was a kid. Pretty weird.
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Well Artist, first let me say welcome and up front, I have an ileostomy and after my last operation I went through a period where everything changed as far as discharge went. I had never heard such noise coming from my stoma and one day in the doctor's office it really made a racket, and all I was getting was as close to water as one could get, and my doctor told me it could take up to a year to settle down, actually, it took eleven months. Now this is something never mentioned before surgery, so now included in my (diet) ha! is Imodium and that is not all the time, only when everything is almost clear liquid, but I should be taking it regularly, but what the heck, I try to get rid of one problem at a time. I really wish I could offer something more tangible than wait it out. Also, we'd like to apologize for taking over your thread concerning anesthesia, talk about a RED FLAG, I hope you will understand.
Thanks in advance. Ed
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This is what most people do not understand about general anesthesia.
There is a 1 to 2 percent chance during an operation of death, not due to the surgery itself but the anesthesia.
The body interprets anesthesia as a shutdown. In some cases, when you hear about a person recovering from surgery, the first day or two they will be doing alright, then they start to go downhill, as the body shuts down one organ after another. Once that progression starts, it is very hard to stop. Sometimes it will not be a specific organ that shuts down, but a part of the body, usually an extremity.

It takes some people months to recover from the anesthesia.
One of the hardest hit areas of the body is the "gut". It will often take it several days to "wake up" after general anesthesia. Well after you are up and walking, the gut can still be "asleep".

Anesthesia, in most people, seems to be cumulative; by that, I mean the longer you are under, the more chance there may be complications due to anesthesia. Surgeons try and keep the patient under for as little time as possible.

You may well return to what was normal for you, however, it may take months.

You need to educate yourself on this matter and ask lots of questions.

Good luck

Rick.....

Hi Rick, that's a lot of good information. The only problem is I have gone through three major operations before this happened. Afterwards, when I was aware of what could happen, I talked to my surgeon about this, and he assured me it wouldn't happen again. It didn't, and everything went great: no more blockages and that damn tube up the nose to drain out the stomach. I guess my point is, how could one have gone through so many surgeries and never had these terrible hallucinations? At the time, they were real, but never having them before, the ability to ask prior would be a chore of some magnitude. Now, my biggest fear is having a heart attack while under, and you can be assured I let them know about that,
having two during a couple of operations.
Thanks for the post. Live and learn, the operative word being live. Ed