Streaming Stoma

He would have been much better off if we had left his butt alone, but like a good patient, he agreed to a routine colonoscopy. As often happens, a benign polyp was found and removed. To make sure that it didn't return, another colonoscopy was done. The polyp was back and so was once again removed. It was still benign. The process was repeated I don't know how many times until it was decided that a section of the uncooperative colon needed to be removed and sewn back together again. Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, this was not a good idea.

After the surgery, he was discharged home and almost immediately began to have problems with partially digested food coming out the incision in his abdomen. Did I forget to mention that somehow the incision burst open?

Having poop floating around loose in the abdominal cavity and oozing out a wound is never a good thing. He nearly died from septic shock and spent some time in a coma while a vent breathed for him, but he is doing much better now. He is still pooping out his abdomen, but now it's going safely into an ileostomy bag.

So much of his colon has been diverted that few if any nutrients are being absorbed by what is left of his digestive tract. His stoma emptied nearly 4 liters of liquid stool during our 8 hour shift alone. That is a lot of s... and he is losing electrolytes as fast as we can replace them. He is one sick dude.

His polyps were never cancerous, although there is the possibility that they could have turned cancerous someday. Given that he's in his eighties, the better approach may have been to do nothing, but it's easy for me to say that because I know how badly things turned out. It's too bad that decisions have to be made without first knowing how things will turn out.