I have an appointment with my surgeon this coming week, where we will set the date for my takedown surgery, provided that everything goes well with the dye study on the pouch. He mentioned that he's going to give me a foley catheter at this appointment so that I can inject water into the stoma to begin to stretch the pouch before takedown. Has anyone else done this or heard of this before? Did it help?

Hi. No, I have never heard of that before. All I know is that the pouch gradually stretches on its own after takedown, and its capacity increases over time. I don't know what a one time injection of water will do for you since it takes a while for it to stretch.

No, this isn't a one-time thing. According to him, I'm supposed to gradually increase the number of cc's I'm injecting and practice retaining it for as long as I can. He said to do it daily until takedown, which is about 7 weeks away.
I sort of get the concept of the idea, but I just hadn't heard anyone bring it up before.

interesting, but I'd never heard of it either.

First off I must stoma's you aren't supposed to irrigate like that. Maybe he meant putting it in throught the rectum. But yea I've never heard of that either.

Hi Michelle -

I actually have heard of this...one of the surgeons I went to for a consultation was a strong believer in this. He felt that by stretching the pouch before takedown, one would have fewer bowel movements immediately after takedown, and less leakage problems (as you get to practice holding it in).

I didn't end up going with that surgeon, and when I asked the surgeon I did choose about that, he was against it, as he said he had seen too many people hurt their pouches by inadvertently jamming the cathetor into them when filling with water.

So, my only advice would be to be careful!

Yes, my surgeon had me do this. As noted, the water is not inserted in the stoma but rather inserted in the rectal area.

Sue

Well, I'm glad it's not the first anyone is hearing of this. When I see the surgeon on Thursday I'll get the info and pass it along as an FYI.

I asked my surgeon about this before takedown and he didn't recommend it. He said that there's no evidence that it helps and that it could potentially be dangerous during the healing phase. I guess another thing surgeons disagree on. In any case, I never did it and have been very happy with my pouch.

Okay, I saw the surgeon today and he used a catheter to insert water into the distal end of the loop ileo. I am supposed to do this at home once a day and gradually increase the number of cc's I can hold... the goal is about 200-250 cc's to be retained for a couple of minutes. He did 75 cc's today and that wasn't a problem, so I'm hopeful.

I have not done this, but read about it in my research on the jpouch.

There is a link from USC - which is supposidly a very reputable hospital.

http://ccnt.hsc.usc.edu/colorectal/jpouchguide.htm#irrigation

Okay, so this procedure should come with a warning "Don't try this at home, kids"! Had all the equipment and tried to do it half a dozen times on my own. No go. As soon as I'd remove the catheter, the water would come spraying back out like a dirty fountain. So then I enlisted Mom's help, thinking that with her nursing background and having a better eye-level view of the stoma than me would help. Let's just say that BOTH of us ended up covered in dirty fountain water. I called the surgeon and explained the difficulty. He said many times with the loop ileo it's difficult to get to the distal end of the ileo. He told me just to keep doing my kegels, as when I had the dye study done it looks like the pouch is a pretty good size. Thank god, because I did NOT feel like doing that every day.