bowel management

"minor problem" my behind!
Who of your friends would consider loss of control of their bowels as a minor problem?!!! I haven't had issues with diarrhea outside of when I was on chemo, and I had prescription medications to help. But there were times that I just wore depends if I was going out cause I didn't want to be stuck in an AWFUL mess! I even had to wear them to bed at times! Good luck and I am sure you will be getting answers to help you with this! Enjoy your vacation and welcome to our board!
mary

diarrhea
I had an ileostomy reversal which leaves alot of people which bathroom issues. I take lomotil, it's prescription, but it enables me to get out. I'm usually good for 6 hours without any BM trouble. Some people have problems with it but so far I haven't. I usually always wear a pad in case. Poise pads are good, their heavier than a maxi, if your going to travel. In time your issues should get alot better, mine did, please don't get discouraged.

louisevruiz said:

My Dad is giving up, help!
Hi,
My Dad is plagued with diarrhea for weeks now. He's experiencing a recurrence of liver cancer. He is not a candidate for another resection.. He's living on Imodium, but it's not helping at all.

He announced he's giving up and is refusing to eat at all nor take his Nexavar (chemo). He's 80 and is becoming very depressed.

Thanks for sharing your story. I'm a cancer survivor and appreciate everyone's honest input.

Louise

Oh, hugs to Dad!!
Oh I so feel for your dad! I felt the same way! The family joke was that they were just going to take my meals and throw them in the toilet for me so that I didn't have the discomfort of diahrrea as for awhile EVERYTHING gave me diahrrea. Nothing worked for me either. The foods that were supposed to help with diahrrea didn't help, nothing over the counter worked and no prescriptions worked either. I was scared to death to eat or drink anything. I wore diapers just about everywhere and I had horrible rashes and bled. My oncologist finally put me on an opiate based prescription (I'll see if I can get the name of it when I get home)and that actually would work for a few hours. I never got more than about 5 hours at a time without diahrrea and that was even after bringing in the big guns. I was on Belladonna for cramping which is also an opiate. Between the two I was finally able to get some sleep as I couldn't sleep without waking up in a messy diaper thus compounding the rash and bleeding. What I found that helped immensely with the acidic burning was taking Tums. Although the opiates make you kind of dopey, it might give him some relief. Please tell him to hang in there, it does eventually get better. Now I go back and forth between constipation and diahrrea but the diahrrea seems to be a once a day thing not an all day every day thing like it used to be.

Please tell him I said to hang in there and talk to his doctor about the opiate based rx's, if he's comfortable taking an opiate. He might not be but I was as desperate as he seems to be and it did help me.