I met with my new surgeon on September 19th. Going into the appointment, I was pretty nervous and didn't really expect very much to come out of it...but boy, was I wrong! My new surgeon was very confident he could fix all my issues and gave me a few different surgical options! He said he could repair my parastomal hernia (with mesh), form a new end-loop ileostomy (basically a loop ileostomy with a smaller distal loop to avoid prolapse), and remove part of my colon and perform a rectopexy to fix the rectal prolapse that came back! But, before doing any surgery, he wanted to do a colonoscopy and have me do another defecogram. I left that appointment very unsure and hesitant to trust another surgeon that I just met with such a major surgery, but he said to go to his ER if I had another major prolapse in the meantime. The following week I had the colonoscopy and discussed my surgical options with my family. He gave me the option to do the surgery all at once, or in separate parts but my family felt that it would be best to just get everything over with at once.
Well, with my luck, 2 days after my colonoscopy I ended up in the ER with my stoma horribly prolapsed and swollen...AGAIN! I was admitted to the hospital on a Sunday and given dilaudid to ease the pain, but unfortunately my surgeon was not on-call that night and the residents had their own agenda! My mom and I both told them NOT to try pushing my stoma back in (advice from the previous surgeon) becuase it will not work and only cause more pain and agony, but they ignored us completely! After a failed attempt to ease it back in with sugar (Yes, they dumped multiple packs of sugar onto my stoma!), they decided to put another bag on and leave me laying in reverse trendelenburg (laying on back w/ feet higher than head) position til my surgeon can perform the surgery on Wednesday! By this point I was in excruciating pain, my stoma was prolapsed and swollen, I had a urinary catheter,a pain pump and was on strict bed rest! As expected, the measures they took to prevent further prolapse failed miserably! By Tuesday night my stoma swelled so badly that it started to look like it was becoming necrotic. Drs were in every 30 mins throughout that night, and then the following day, I went in for surgery! Since I hadn't officially made my decision on what surgery I wanted before I was admitted and on heavy pain meds, I left the decision up to my mom. The final decision ended up being the full 3-part surgery which included a new stoma, bovine mesh around the stoma, colon & rectal resection, and a rectopexy! In my next post I will explain what happened after surgery!
