Hi all,

Just wanted to give a quick update. Everything seems to be going really well. I had surgery 1 on May 22nd. A 6 day stay in the hospital turned into a 17 day stay due to my system waking up and then shutting down and then having to be really conservative when trying to get my output to slow down before I left the hospital.

So far, my recovery at home has been going real smooth. My biggest problem is having patience with my loop ileo. The morning hours are the best for I can go 4 hours without emptying the pouch. But the afternoon sees me emptying the pouch a lot more. Sometimes 4 times in an hour. All in all, I probably empty about 8-12 times a day. Thankfully, the output is somewhat thick. I have been able to manage my hydration. So in that regard, I am doing well. It's just difficult to get a good night sleep, which worries me when I return to work the 2nd week in July.

I just hope and pray that the output from my J-pouch will be considerably less. And from a lot of the posts I have been reading, there is a big difference between the output of the ileo compared to the j-pouch. I hope that is the case for me.

I will be having a pouchoscopy on 7/11. Hopefully that goes well and I Can get to the next stage and schedule my pouchogram and hopefully have my takedown mid-August.

So, the bottom line is all is going as well as can be expected. I just need to have better patience with my ileo, which sometimes is tough (last night was a tough night). I was one of the few people that was lucky enough to have my colitis in remission for 18 of the 24 years I had it. So I never really had to go to the bathroom a lot when I had my colon. Ironically, now that my colon has been removed, I am in the bathroom a whole lot more than before. Sometimes that is frustrating. But, hopefully it won't be so bad after the takedown.

All in all, I am doing well. Thank you to this community for all of the helpful posts that I have read.

Peace,
Mark