Experiences with Delayed Colostomy Takedown Surgery?

Had a surgery that went bad. The doctor put in a temporary colostomy and said the longer we wait, the better for the takedown. He said 6 months. Has anyone gone through this, and how did it turn out? Going on 3 weeks after surgery.

Hey, you might want to post this question in the ostomy section at the very top of the forum home page. We have two excellent nurses who know just about everything. They may not always have the time to check the entire forum, but do check the ostomy question part almost daily. Good luck.

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I have been through this twice. I now have a permanent ileostomy. Everyone is different and this makes my life a whole lot easier than a j-pouch. You should head over to www.jpouch.org and hang around for a while to get a feel of what life would be like, good and bad. Hopefully more good than bad

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Just had this done on July 1, 2009. I had a colostomy and developed some hernias. The surgery went great, the doctor removed the hernias, took down the colostomy, did a bit of extra tummy tuck work, and I was home in 5 days.





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It is now seven weeks since the procedure. Two weeks after the procedure, they removed the staples, then last week (6 weeks), I went back in, and he removed all these stitches that were there from all the extra work.





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At first, I would not recommend this to anyone because I was having a lot of intermittent pain from the stitches, got bound up a couple of times, but a mild laxative worked great. A lot of my problems were not from the actual surgery but other things. I would feel great for half a day, then feel miserable.





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Now that the stitches are out, wow, I feel wonderful. They were causing most of my problems. I still have to wear the girdle thing to keep everything tight. I go back to my surgeon next week for another check-up (need to find out if I can start bowling). Hitting the throne every day regularly. Using the Activia with fiber really helps, much better than playing around with laxatives, stool softeners, or other stuff.



Don't hesitate to have this done. The first few weeks are the hardest to get used to, then wham, you will feel great again and get back to a normal life. A regular takedown is probably a lot easier than what I had done, and you will recuperate a lot faster.



God bless & good luck.

Windy, generally it's true the longer the better. The intestine is very slow to heal.

I don't know if you are talking about J pouch surgery or not. In many cases, the doctor will re-hook the intestine about 8 weeks after the J pouch surgery.



After my second operation, I was told to wait 6 months to get hooked back up. So I waited, and at the end of 6 months, I went knocking on my surgeon's door. The guy says he can't hook me up because he cut out all of my colon. That was the first I had heard of that. Of course, I was shocked, to say the least. So I had another surgeon do the J pouch thing.



The gut is slow to heal and prone to scar tissue. Many doctors want the extra time for the inflammation to go down and the scar tissue to normalize. The extra time does, to some extent, give a better percentage of a successful surgery. Pardon my terrible spelling.



Good luck



Rick.....

Living with Your Ostomy | Hollister

Six years ago, I had a temporary ileostomy post-surgery. They did the reconnection after 3 months. The reconnection was not a big deal at all. Due to my problems, I now have a permanent colostomy (for 2 weeks). One thing I noticed is when you do not expect a permanent ostomy, you don't pay much attention to things. When you know it is for good, you sit up and listen. And go online! I never did that 6 years ago. Good luck.

I too am in the same position. I had my surgery in January this year, and my takedown is penciled in for Christmas. I was also told the longer between surgeries, the higher the success rate. xx

I had my temporary colostomy in October 2008, they did the take down on July 1, 2009 and as you can see from my post above, all went well -  time was 9 1/2 mos between surgeries.

It's great to see everyone getting on with their J-pouch. I've had an ileostomy for three years now, and my temporary ostomy for a year. I had a wound beside my stoma, which is why my doctor couldn't go ahead with my reversal. That's all healed now, so I should be going in soon for my takedown. I really hope everything turns out okay.
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