Coping With Colon Resection

May 6 of this year I ate with my youngest daughter at a local buffet style restaurant. I ate one piece of meatloaf and some pot roast, my daughter at all chicken.

Diarrhea started the next day, but the 8th was my day in hell. I’m a cardiac nurse on a very busy unit, however I was having to balance my patients needs around my every 10 min. or so trips to the bathroom to pass large quantities of blood. That is the last day I’ve worked to this point.

I ended up in the hospital on the 12th and went thru all kinds of testing, labs, colonoscopy. Eventually I was deemed a surgical patient rather than a medical patient and it took the entire weekend to find me a surgeon

On Monday the 18th I was transferred to another hospital to this surgeon who immediately said he believed my GI but was not gonna do any surgery until my initial illness was found. By Wed. the winner was named - shiga toxin producing e choli. So I started in on Bactrim twice a day for three weeks, got a picc line placed for home IV fluids, and went home to wait out the death of the bug.

On June 9 I finally had my colon resection It went well, I was discharged home on the 11th with no mention of how long do I stay on liquids, how do I add solids. And that’s where I still am nearly a month post-op. Eat solids, get diarrhea, stay with liquids, get diarrhea. So if anyone out there could give me suggestions of how to get back to eating and beginning to get my strength back, names of any supplements that have helped in recovery. And just how long is it normal for this yellow stuff that doc says is hydrolized fat continue to seep out?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I go back to work two weeks from today and don’t have the least clue how.

Thanks, Donna