I have bouts of severe pain in my rectum. Have been back for a colonoscopy & then a sigmoidoscopy to check if anything is wrong. All the surgeon could find was hard faecal matter trapped at the end of the J pouch which he removed & for a while I felt ok. He said if it recurs, which I think it has because the severe pain is back (it feels like I have a sharp stone trapped up my bum!) - then I might need to have it cleared out again. Its only a few months since it was cleaned out when having the sigmoidoscopy. Does anyone else have this issue & can recommend any solutions? I asked if colonics might help but the surgeon said no. Thanks in advance.
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Sorry if the description is "too much information" but it's how I have come to be after surgeries & complications & ongoing pain.
I don't think it's too much information, Shelley, but it's hard to know from here what's causing the pain. You can't get a "colonic" without a colon, but some folks here have had success with pouch irrigation. If your pain is really from retained stool, and you can't find a way to get your pouch to empty then perhaps irrigation would help. Just search the site for that word and you'll find the threads.
Is it possible that your stool is too thick? The pouch isn't very good at pushing hard poop through.
Thanks so much for the reply. My understanding is I still have part of my colon. The cancer was in the rectum & after initially planning to take all the colon because I have a gene in my family making us high risk for bowel cancer my gene testing was completed just before surgery and I did not have the faulty gene. So they only took part of the colon so I could have better control. Anyway your suggestion about the pouch irrigation is similar to what I was thinking but the surgeon reckoned it would not help. So thought I would ask if anyone has similar symptoms and how they deal with it. I vary between diarrhoea & very firm BMs. The firm option seemed better to cope with from a control point of view but not so much now I have this painful compaction problem. Will try diet changes.
My apologies- I forgot you had a colonic J-pouch. Psyllium might help regulate the consistency, as long as you're drinking enough water. Good luck!
There is a condition called tenesmus that has symptoms similar to what you describe. It's basically a spasm of the rectum or rectal area. I've had it a few times; it's quite painful. There is medication for it. Look it up and see if it may be what you're experiencing.