Hi all! After 6 plus years if having absolutely no issues whatsoever with my pouch, able to eat anything I wanted, and never even established a colo-rectal or GI doc when I moved to Florida 6 years ago...I had my first "hiccup" with my pouch. I ended up in the hospital for two days with a stricture and partial obstruction...sigh...my good fortune thus far was obviously too good to remain true.

I had been having abdominal pain, urgency and the inability to pass alot of stool. I was pushing so hard that I had made myself so sore, down to my bones. It was awful. This had been going on intermittently for a few months and I was in denial and did nothing about it.

The past week and a half however, things got progressively worse and long story short, I ended up in the ER having a CT and tons of pain.

I was very lucky to have the Colo-Rectal surgeon who was on call as he has a reputation of being a great surgeon. In fact, I work with him at my new job as Nurse Manager of the surgery center he sometimes operates in. Haven't known him long but I was very impressed by how he handled my case. He was very knowledgeable about j-pouches. For those of you in the central Florida region...his name is Dr. Blake.

Anyhow, he did a scope of the pouch, a gastrograffin enema test and did a balloon dilation of the stricture. He put me on a 5 day dose of Cipro and I already feel SO MUCH BETTER!!!

I guess I will have to take a little better care of my pouch health from now on! I am so grateful to have found a good doc to go to!

While he was doing the scope, he found what he thought was a "chronic" ulcer in my pouch but no inflammation indicative of pouchitis. Any ideas where this ulcer came from or what it is? That kind of freaked me out since that is what I had on my colon. Any info on that would be appreciated!

Thanks for listening and I promise to take better care of my pouch from now on

Thanks again,
Alex

Did you do anything dumb or different that you think caused the hiccup?

Dont feel bad about not having issues with your pouch till now. I have had mine 17 years and have not had mine scoped yearly Only when I was having an issue and needed dilation ( seemed to avg 2-3 years) I have only now had any major issues from my pouch and I dont believe it was from lack of care I had to go yeast free from all the years of antibiotics and pregnant with triplets I got septic so I had enough antibiotics for a lifetime So I stayed away from yeast and sugar that is all the care I did Your ulcer, could it be due to the inability to empty your pouch? Wish I could help more