Disclaimer: This article includes graphic detail about a post rectal surgery bowel movement.
If you have Multiple Sclerosis, you have probably dealt with gut issues. Most of mine have been chronic constipation, but with some of my medications, and using an osmotic laxative to try to correct the problem, my poops would range from none existent to dry, hard rocks that required a manual evac to mudslide containing gravel to liquid fire. The end result would be ass trauma in the form of a fissure. The scars from this trauma were skin tags, which didn’t make bowel movements any easier, hence my recent rectal surgery.
The advice of most physicians to solve the problem would be 1) eat more fiber, and 2) drink more water. I’m not saying to not do those things, but there are a few things you should know first. There is no perfect amount of fiber intake for every person. Too much fiber can cause the same problems as too little. How many grams of fiber you need in a day depends on your daily caloric intake. The formula is simple: one gram of fiber per every 100 calories. This should also help explain why the recommended fiber intake for men is higher than for women, and why the recommended fiber intake for people over the age of 50 is less than what it is for someone in their 20s.
Water intake is so important, but it is also important to consider when water is entering our colon. Enter the concept of gastric sieving. This concept explains how our stomachs make more room when we are eating. Water is sieved out of the stomach to allow for more food intake. This is mainly talked about regarding overeating and satiety, but it is an important consideration for people with gut motility issues. When we take food and blend it with water before consuming it, this makes it more difficult for the stomach to sieve out the water than if we simply drink water alongside a meal consisting of solid foods.
For people with feeding tubes, foods are blended with water, allowing them to more easily move through the digestive tract. So what about doing this even if you are not a feeding tube? This is what I wound up asking myself following the Hellish first few days after my rectal surgery.
On the day of my surgery, I was told to avoid spicy foods and fried foods for the first 24 hours, and then I could go back to my regular diet. Huh! I adopted a bland, low residue diet at first. I wanted to keep my poops small. I considered a clear liquid diet for the first day, but I needed something to coat my stomach, which hurt from the pain killers they gave me, and I was actually really hungry when I got home, so I ate canned carrots, mashed potatoes, canned pears… the low res fruits and veggies that I thought would get me through this thing. Despite the low residue diet, a few days into the healing process, it became necessary to do a manual evacuation with a gloved finger slathered in the lidocaine cream they gave me to numb the area. The cream did nothing. I was as gentle as can be, but still the pain… what made things so much worse was the fact that whenever I experience severe constipation and/or ass trauma, my interstitial cystitis will flare up. So I have an asshole that refuses to open (and I don’t have anal stenosis - I just have a brain and an asshole that often aren’t communicating with one another thanks to MS), a bladder that refuses to empty, and am worried that unless I make this evac happen, I will develop a fistula (this is one of my greatest fears).
This night of agony happened to coincide with our main house drain getting clogged. In case you have never visited Hell, this is where it is: post rectal surgery, main drain for the house clogging on a Sunday. We had a plumber come and sort out the drain the next morning, and Will was able to use the bathroom at the church across the street. We kept water usage to a minimum, so the water in our basement never got to be more than a largish puddle (and we don’t have a fixed up basement, so no lasting damage to anything), but I needed to use my bidet. Regular cleaning of the area post surgery is critical, and the cold water was one of the only things to offer any relief at all. There was the broken up turd from the manual evac, which wound up going into the trash, and there was blood.
All in all, I have been less concerned with infection (despite the location, this is pretty rare) than with having another skin tag cropping up. To go through all this pain and to have the problem just come back… well, I couldn’t let it happen. I refuse to let it happen. So I decided to subsist on fruit and vegetable juice, smoothies (as long as they weren’t too thick), and soup. I started to feel a lot better, but then I was having too loose of stools (still an improvement), so I started to include small amounts of solid food. I am still experimenting, but the sweet spot for me seems to be no more solid foods in a day than what would fill a one quart bowl, and this is to be spread out throughout the day (such as having a piece of bread with a bowl of soup, or a handful of nuts with a smoothie). Yes, I lost a few pounds, but I’m not counting calories or aiming for weight loss. I am aiming to have a digestive tract that works better. I am aiming to heal my ass!
I still watch the macro- and micronutrients, making sure I get enough protein, and that I don’t get too much sugar. I am also making sure to get probiotics in my diet. By the way, I highly recommend Lifeway’s oatmilk kefir.
It has been just a little over two weeks since my surgery. My ass has now stopped bleeding. I took an actual normal poop for the first time in a long time. I am now able to pee normally too. I hope it lasts. If this change to my diet continues to make my life better in these ways, then I believe others like me should try it and the outcomes should be studied. Most people have seen the tee shirts with the silhouette of a person throwing their hands in the air, proclaiming, “I pooped today!” This may be just a joke for most people, but for someone like me, being able to say, “I pooped today!” really is a major achievement.
I pooped today!
Wow, do you think your house was having sympathy clogging? Just one of those things happening is pretty horrific, but both at the same time really does sound like pure hell. Congratulations on the normal poop.