Fatigue and fear of eating after open radical neph and ileus

Years before I had kidney cancer, I had a pretty bad eating disorder. I needed to lose weight to get my blood pressure and cholesterol to healthier levels. My doc offered pills, but I chose to exercise and change my diet. Well, I overdid it. I’m 6’2” tall and I went from 255 pounds down to 150 pounds in a very short amount of time. I then had two incidents where my intestines twisted. The first one required some fairly simple surgery (still painful, but not too involved). In the second one, my colon twisted so much that it completely blocked everything. That required a much more involved surgery that took out 18 inches of my sigmoid colon and left me, temporarily with having to poop into an ileostomy bag. My weight dropped below 140 pounds and my iron level was so low, the surgeon would not “reconnect” my intestines until I got it back up. My energy level, like yours, was very low. But with the ileostomy, like you, I was scared to eat a lot of solid food. Here’s what we did:

1). Cream of Wheat is quite high in iron. So I had that twice a day and my wife would crush a multi-vitamin with iron in it (100% of the RDA for iron) and I’d have that mixture.

2). The drink supplement Ensure has a lot of iron in it. So I had that twice a day.

3). I’d have a roast beef sandwich for lunch, and another type of meat for dinner to get iron into me.

4). I would have a banana and yogurt just before bed because I was trying to firm up my output. Before the Apple and yogurt, my output into the bag was mostly liquid. The banana and yogurt helped firm it up. Since you have the reverse problem, you can skip that.

5). I didn’t have much in the way of veggies as the doctor said they were a little too fibrous and could clog me up. And that, in fact, did happen early on when we tried to purée spinach. I got a bowel obstruction and had to go back to the hospital.

The surgeon expected it would take me six months to get my iron levels up. With this “diet”, we got it there in two months, and got my weight back up to 180. The surgeon was shocked. But she got me reconnected. I slowly reintroduced different fruits and veggies back into my diet. I’ve maintained the 180 pounds +/- 5 pounds depending on salt intake and pigging out on vacation once in a while. And my blood pressure and cholesterol readings are very good now.

So, in your case, doing 1, 2 and 3 should help get your iron level back up. And once that happens and you’re able to walk more, the exercise should help with your digestion issues. But before doing any of it, talk to your doc and see what he thinks. We’re all different and what worked for me might not work for others.