Hi all!
I guess I'm wondering if it's possible to be nursing a partial blockage, without the pain or nausea you'd ordinarily expect, for four, maybe five at this point days. I've had my j-pouch for a year and four months due to FAP and, until last Friday, I had to use the restroom every hour and a half, was working on getting that to two hours or more and adding Metamucil in with some success. That day, or maybe the day before (in the interest of full disclosure), I smoked some pretty low potency marijuana after two meals, and abandoned it Friday after I suddenly had no movements from, like, 10 AM to 5 or 6 PM.
At that point I called the hospital I get GI care at to ask them what to do. The doctor on call said he'd never heard of constipation with a j-pouch but also did not think, without pain or nausea, that what I had was a blockage. He recommended I use MiraLax, which I did, (he also suggested I continue using Metamucil, which struck me as counterproductive?) and skipped dinner. That seemed to do the trick over the course of the night so, on Saturday, I didn't continue taking it. My bowel seemed to be producing stool infrequently and in small amounts but I felt at that time that continuing to use MiraLax wasn't a great idea in terms of getting back to normal. I went to bed without dinner again, sort of wired, and woke up on Sunday morning to take some MiraLax again. It didn't really seem to do anything so I muddled through the day and made it to the end, without dinner, with an additional dose of MiraLax after an additional call to my hospital led to the on-call doctor telling me I could take it two to three times a day.
That once again did seem to clean me out at some point early in the morning so on Monday I once again didn't take any MiraLax and muddled through the day. Now I find myself once again in the middle of the day, with a bowel pattern that does not match my normal at all, wondering what exactly is wrong with me. I've had a blockage before when I had my ostomy so I'm familiar with the pain I apparently ought to be in by now and the nausea if I were blocked but it doesn't sound like people with j-pouches get constipated either. I'm about to take MiraLax again because I can't think of what else to do. It's starting to feel, however, like I'm in some kind of tailspin I can't stop that just doesn't make any sense to me. I'm certain skipping dinner isn't doing me any favors, reasonably sure that continuing to take MiraLax is going to make it hard to determine when I'm back to normal at all and it doesn't seem to be fixing the issue, and I really just can't tell which thing I'm doing wrong (if anything) has caused or is causing this problem or if I'm aggressively trying to over-manage something.
I apologize for the long, rambling post; I guess I was just hoping I could get some clarity on what it is I should do or what, from other pouchers' experience, this would even be. I doubt it will be an emergency if I can just clear myself with MiraLax again but I'm not getting to any kind of fix and it's very frustrating when I was already afraid that I'm moving too late on trying to thicken my stool and get somewhere comfortable with how often I have to go. I appreciate any insight because, over a year into this, I don't feel like I have much insight into life with a j-pouch myself.
