I had my takedown surgery and went off on vacation, which was going great until my open wound from the takedown started squirting out liquid. We found a hospital that gave me a bag to put over it, went home early and had the fistula fixed. Problem solved, I thought. That wound is healing nicely, but to fix it they had to open the other earlier incision, which got a pocket infection, so he opened it up and I was doing wet/dry dressings 3x a day, it seemed to be going well, until this morning when I sat down to have a bm and green stuff started flying out of the hole! Talk about freaky. I got in to see my doc, who said that it is another fistula. Both have occurred 10 days post op, and he has no idea why. I now have a bag over it for 6-8 weeks until I can get to a healthy weight - I was 120 when we started and am 98 now..... ick. He is going to send me to a geneticist to see if I have something wrong with my healing, but I was just wondering if anyone else has dealt with this problem. I searched fistula, and found lots of other kinds, but not like this...

I had a hole on the base of my abdomen that was supposed to just be a drainage hole but ended up a fistula requiring a little mini bag to catch everything. Not a pleasant experience and it actually necessitated the need to bump up the date for my next surgery. I also have trouble healing so I feel your pain. I hope they are able to provide relief for you soon.

Ah Kristi...I have nothing to add here, but just want to wish you luck. I was wondering how you were doing since we didn't here from you after your takedown episode that you posted.

I'm sorry you're having these complications - hopefully someone will come along with some advice soon!

Hang in there,
Lisa

It can just be one of those things since you have IBD and you had bowel surgery, but you may want a more thorough work up for Crohn's. Having spondylitis may just mean that your UC is more agressive than others might be, because of the extraintestinal disease. I have spondylitis too, and also had problematic incisions each time I had surgery, including my c-section 21 years ago. My spondylitis was not diagnosed until a couple of years ago, and this was a decade after my j-pouch surgery.

Jan