Hello,
I've had a j-pouch for 12 years, and UC for 24 years (since the age of 2). After my surgery I had minor flair ups, usually treated effectively with cipro/flagyl. 2 years ago I was hospitalized with severe abdominal pain, and some weight loss (10kg in 2 weeks). They found an abdominal abscess, treated for 3 days on IV antibiotics, and sent home with some oral, it seemed to clear it up.
About 6 months afterwards I started having extremely severe abdominal pain (usually slightly above my belly button). My washroom frequency changed from 4x-7x to 10x-20x, sometimes feels very urgent with very little excretion, my stomach started rumbling constantly, painful rumbling, very gasy stools, my stomach hurts most severely after waking, and after eating.
I've had 4 sigmoidoscopy's in the past 18 months, 3 rounds of antibiotics, 4 tapering rounds of prednisone. My doctor and her colleagues keep telling me there pouch inflammation in the scope, and ct scans, the prednisone usually calms it for a month. Their theory was calm the pouch and it would work itself out.
Now I'm in the hospital, my GI doctor is working the ward all week, my scope today showed little to no inflammation (I'm still on prednisone). She had a very difficult time moving the scope from my pouch into the small bowel however, her theory is the opening to my pouch may be too small, bent, trapping gas and matter in my small bowel to cause the symptoms. I currently have another barium enema tomorrow for the doctors to hopefully see it better.
Has anyone experienced anything like this?
Any good questions, or tests I should ask/request while I have the opportunity?
And how would this issue be corrected?