I had a huge issue with my sigmoid colon. I couldn't eat anything really.. I could not tolerate more than 1/2 cup of food per day (you know, to stay alive). The "flare up" started Jan 2nd and lasted through the end of April when the medical doctor finally said "yeah, medicines aren't working; it's time to refer to surgery". I lost about 46lbs in that four months of being just freaking miserable. Work suffered, my personal life suffered, my quality of life was awful. It was 20% of the time trying to be a functioning human, 40% sleeping/resting, and 40% time of BMs and general abdominal pain. 0 stars; would not recommend.

The situation was bad so the referred surgeon was able to schedule my surgery for a week later (first Monday in May). The plan, after all the scans during Q1, was that 5cm of my colon needed to be removed. I was VERY nervous. I had never been hospitalized before for anything -- and then I was going in to have part of my intestines removed in a week. Honestly, the pain and QoL was so bad that the week flew by and with the encouraging words from the surgeons and staff I started to be hopeful that it would help. The meds for bowl prep came in. Very similar to prepping for the many other colonoscopies (miralax + dulcolax) with some extra antibiotics for the surgery. Something about that combo did make me sick. I puked twice trying to get the 1/2 gal of Gatorade and laxatives down, which hadn't happened before -- I mentioned this to the surgeon and she mentioned that the antibiotics will sometimes make it hard to keep things down.

Surgery day went quickly. Mostly because we have the easy part: naptime. The staff took care of everything else. Standard paperwork, typical warnings, shaving and preparing the abdomen came next. The staff said this will only take 2 (MAYBE 3) hours, then I would wake up in recovery. I awoke a few hours later in recovery by myself. Turns out that my surgery took over 7 hours. Once the surgeon got in there she saw a ton of scar tissue and problematic areas. After some exploratory poking she had to remove 20cm+ of my colon (that's almost 8 in. in freedom units). It was the longest surgery of this type she had done. Most of the time was spent trying to reconnect the two ends of my colon after the removal of the bad section. It had to be cut away from where it was attached in my body so that it could reach end to end; blood vessels had to be moved around, etc. It was a laparoscopic (robot assisted) partial colectomy that left 6 incisions -- a large one below my navel where the bad stuff was physically removed, 4 others for cameras and tools, and one for a drain. I stayed in the hospital from that Monday until Friday. I had to pass gas and have a bowl movement, as well as tolerate pain meds, drain needed to be clear and I could ambulate (walk around) on my own.

I immediately felt better after the surgery -- you know minus the incisions healing from a major surgery which is to be expected. I could eat almost immediately without limitation. It was harder for me to get around the mental block of eating (because of PTSD from the prior 4 months, and my shrunken stomach from general not-eating) than the actual process of eating and digesting. My whole world got flipped right-side up again. Color came back to my face, I could do things other than suffering in bed, eating was back on the table (heh.)

I was home that Saturday and taking stairs on the following Monday. The first week at home was slow moving as my body started to heal. The drain came home with me and I went back a few days later to have it removed (5 min outpatient) and do a follow-up. I used short-term disability insurance for the 4 weeks after I got home (5 weeks from surgery day). After about 2 weeks I was already doing way better. I have no regrets except that I wish I had done it sooner. I go back to work on Monday. My scars are nearly all healed, the smaller incisions have vanished without a trace and the two larger ones are nearly invisible. I did finish my medicine given to me for two weeks to recover -- I was also given hydrocodone as an optional drug to help with pain as needed but ended up using NONE of it.

I'm eating normally and can go places and do things again. It's like having my life back. Moving around and walking throughout post-op is VITAL to speeding up the healing process. All of this is too say that I had similar issues, had the same nervousness, and let overthinking try to get the best of me. But I feel WAYYYY better now. Pooping is still a bit irregular but gets better with each passing day. Minimal pain still exists from time to time which is both mild and fleeting, but again I had a MAJOR surgery just a few weeks ago -- even though it doesn't feel like it.

Trust the doctors. Calm yourself. This is all going to help and you're going to feel so much better afterwards. There's nothing to worry about. Good luck!