Dear People,
I'm writing you from the capital of Croatia, Zagreb. My girlfriend is
in the hospital here, and has been through 8 operations in the last
year, mostly dealing with complications after a tumor removal from the
rectum. She had serious adhesions of the thin bowel which were cut
loose last year, and lived painlessly with a stoma for 6 months. After
the "closing operation" adhesions quickly formed again seriously, and
blocked the bowel. Another operation to "cut things loose" was
performed before 10 days, and she is very slowly starting to eat
somethings again. Besides a rectovaginal fistula which showed up before
two days (with which I will not bother you here), she is again showing
signs of developing pain pointing to adhesions, this time not (yet?)
blocking the bowel movement, and not as massive as the ones before.
Doctors in this country have a strong tendency to "go for the knife" and
will probably show up tomorrow or the day after with the idea for
another operation. With all your expertise and knowledge in this field
would you recommend to give that another try, or to wait if the pains
are bearable and the bowel movement not obstructed? Is there a chance
for these pains to get less over time when things heal,or worse if you
don't operate in time because of these adhesions spreading, and are
there any techniques (yoga, meditations, stretchings, breathings) that
might help fight the pain structurally? As medical care in this country
is not as advanced as in many of your countries we do have to find out
most things by ourselves, and be ahead of our doctors by at least one
step all of the time.
As the girl in question is the love of my life you will understand the
urgency of these questions, and I thank you all in advance for any
support and info that you can spare us at these hard moments. In the
meantime I'm also wishing all of you a lot of strength and luck in
dealing with your problems and suffering from this so hidden ordeal that
so many people have to go through without "the world" knowing about it
(or caring much, it seems). The caring I spotted on this site, however,
leaves some space for hope, and hope is all we have. May you nurture
yours,