> I could use some advice to shorten my research pathway.
> Last night my wife underwent her second major abdominal surgery in three
> weeks. The second was to relieve adhesions formed after the first. The
> first was to remove her colon due to detection of cancerous tumor in the
> cecum.
> This morning the surgeon told me my wife "as a tendency toward formation
> of adhesions in between the loops of the small intestine.
Donald,
You bring up a good point, one that I don't think we discuss here often --- adhesions differ. I too have adhesions that seem to cause the small bowel to become stuck to other pieces of bowel or bands of adhesion that form nooses around the bowel.
My doctor said that he more often sees adhering of the internal organs to the intestinal wall.
Adhesions can arise from surgery and from disease like endometriosis. It isn't clear that management of all adhesion disease is -- or can be -- the same.
One suggestion that my surgeon had after my last bowel obstruction was to use an NSAID to prevent inflammation. Steroids are also sometimes used, but they do retard healing after surgery and aren't the best answer.
I was taking 800 mg of motrin for several months and now have moved to a daily 200 mg of Celebrex. Since celebrex has been shown to prevent some growth of colon polyps and is in trials for preventing recurrence of colon cancer, you might want to consider asking the doctor about it.
I also am very careful about diet, avoiding anything that cannot be reduced to mush because there are several areas of very narrow bowel. This past week two morning servings of simple old raisin bran has left me with pain, gas, and vomiting!
Will your wife be having chemo?
Best of everything to both of you,
by the way, there is a good colon discussion list available at http://www.acor.org
Kate
-- Kate Murphy katemm@mindspring.com