APPROPRIATE FOOD TO EAT AFTER COLON RESECTION SURGERY

4 months after total removal of colon. Started eating soft foods; almond milk, meta mutil and imodium (as directed on container). Moved to all chicken (except fried), broiled fish, hamburgers and subway tuna sandwiches; medium spiced meats, mashed, boiled,baked white and sweet potatoes; buttered or other spiced rice; cooked veggies; oatmeal and all bran cereals (exclude uncooked raisons); all eggs and 1-bacon; 2 cups coffee and/or green-tea, and loads of lemonade. After second 2 months: steak, very little fried chicken and french fries. All meats the last months. Everything IN MODERATION. About 3 BMs a day and I can pretty well judge by what food(s) and amount I eat when I'll have to be near a bathroom. No emergencies. Eat my favorite (pop corn) 1 or 2 bags almost every night. Ice cream always tended to cause a bowel movement. I am a lover of beans (pinto's or baked, and I indulge myself about every othe day. The immodium (get plastic container, not box for easy access) greatly helps with gas and the mete musil eases stool flow. Sodium bicarbinate (1/2 teaspoon regular kitchen cabinet box sodium) great for keeping enzymes in small intestines under control. Regular exercise and good nightly sleep keeps bodily systems functioning the way they are suppose to function. We are each individually different and I pray that the quality of your life grows exceedingly positive. You are made that way by the same manufacturer. - LHO

Top tip after having this procedure was to chew everything to an absolute paste before swallowing it. Had this done in April 2017, best to go with what your body tells you, big meals don't work for me, little and often, I only eat meat once a week now but lots of fish instead. Whilst I love nuts and cheese these now have to be a rare treat, small amount at a time. Chewing everything thoroughly, just watch how quickly people eat food, it's surprising the amount of stuff swallowed while with no start to digestive system

Thank you for taking the time to write your very helpful message. I have been existing on oatmeal, nuts and flavored yogurt. Time to rethink everything!

Take MetaMucil three times a day

You can eat chicken no skin salmon turkey potatoes no skins no vegetables no salad you can have vanilla ice cream cornflakes milk bananas chicken or turkey cold cuts tuna fish must have white bread nothing with wheat I have coffee with half and half I have been eating this for 5 wks to tell u the truth I am getting tired of this but it is helping me So I will stay with this till my next dr visit in three wks Good luck I hope u feel better

I had colon resection due to diverticulitis..many attacks. Surgery was a week ago. My surgeon gave me a list of foods to eat. Basically corn flakes and banana for breakfast, or eggs and juice with no pulp, no orunes or prune juice.canned fruit ok..no pineapples or mangos
Lunch any ground meats hamburg etc, ive had turkey subs on white bread..no wheat allowed
Dinner, soups with well cooked carrots..no beans of any kind or peas. Meatloaf with baked potato..no skins allowed
You can have muffins and such..white breads and rolls.tuna fish..no celery. You can have ritz crackers ..no graham crackers.
You can have puddings, jello etc.
Only 7 teaspoons of fat per day..butter, mayo, oil.etc;
No seeds, stringy vegetables, or relishes or popcorn until i see her.

You can have sherbet, ice cream decaf coffee or tea no caffeine.
Slowly you can try lettuce in sandwichs.
After next week if no cramps..slowly try fiber.
Afraid to do that at this point.

I saw a list some time ago on colonectomy diet. I would like to see it again please

Updating seems to be a bad idea. I can get colonectomy diet?

Thank you for ur insight. I will definitely be looking into the book. I am only post op 2 weeks, home for 4 days. Of course had to have BM before dc, wound up with five that day, but none since. I have been on a low residue diet for the past 9 months due to continous infections. My food intake is minimal, no appetite & full quickly. A peanut butter & jelly sandwich is fine for the day. I am glad i found this blog & will be checking in. Thank you

Thank you for your information!

Hello All,
Following all of the stress of the early 2017 Hurricane season and a direct hit by IRMA on my home in Tampa, I developed a hard stomach and painful moving gas. We were in the dark for 6 days with no power and lost all of our organic food gardens, tilapia farm and frozen foods. Stress was MASSIVE. FEMA was useless and AWOL The pain seemed to get worse by the day and I suspected food poisoning from a restaurant that maybe had not disposed of unrefrigerated food. Day 6 was so bad I went into Urgent Care, who took an x-ray and diagnosed a massively blocked colon. The laxative and Fleets they recommended did nothing to help, and I eventually got a series of Hydro Colonics from my Wellness Center that cleared my large colon blockage, but relief only lasted a day and then I started bloating again. Truth is, DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON URGENT CARES. They have little to no real skills in diagnosing abdominal issues.
What was happening was a section of my upper small intestine had gone necrotic and then abscessed. It finally ate its way through my bowel and perforated it, releasing all the poisons and pus into my abdomen. Pain was EXCRUCIATING. On OCT 1 while trying to walk off the pain, I felt something give way and my pain went to a 10 +, I hit the floor and could not get up . Time for EMERGENCY room.
Long story short, was in full blown Sepsis, pulse over 115, white count was 39,000! Peritonitis had set in and I was about 6 - 8 hours from death. Went straight into surgery four hours later. they resected about a foot of small intestine and reconnected the resected ends. Did a full exploratory laparoscopy, which means they ran my bowel end to end and had my guts laid out on the table for three hours. Surgeon pronounced it Best Case scenario and after 4 days in ICU, we began the diets from Hell.

Ok, #1. Hospital Nutritionists don't know c**p. I think they get their training from Comic Books. The Nutritionist who came by to see “How we were doing with the food” was not surprised at all when I pointed out that everything on the clear trays was either processed, preserved, full of acids or made with artificial ingredients. ( the custard they served was good for 1.5 years!) When I asked for an organic option I was told none existed. So we began bringing in our own juiced foods and broths and that got us through the clears stage, but with a lot of protesting and push back from the charge nurse who didn’t like sharing their refrigerator space. STRIKE 1

#2. Like many of you here, we could not get a straight answer from our surgeon or the rotating attendings on what was good for our post-operative diets. They gave us all the wrong advice I have read about here and often contradicted each other; In other words, THEY DIDN’T HAVE A CLUE! They served foods guaranteed to irritate a recovering bowel and then wanted to lay on the drugs and other Treatments when their crappy food sent patients into spiraling pain, reflux and digestive events. It was stupefying to experience and horrifying to contemplate what lesser educated patients were being put through. This type of ignorance is guaranteed to prolong hospital stays and cause patients HARM. WE should rename it the hypocrites Oath. STRIKE 2

#3. You have to think of being in Hospitals like being in the RED ZONE in football. The longer you are in the zone, the greater the chance someone will score on you. Despite all of our knowledge (we spent years battling cancers with both parents and in many cases knew more about nursing practices and lab diagnosis than the charge nurse RNs. We had our nursing bibles and med books on hand at all times) and despite keeping our own logs and vitals and I/Os, we were scored on repeatedly, extending my post-operative stay to 24 days!!!! We have a rule after our experiences with our parents that no family member is left unattended when in a hospital. I know not everyone can do this, but it’s a life saver. Patients are in too much pain and stress to be on guard themselves. I had a family member present as patient advocate for my entire stay, they slept in my room and stood guard for all the tries to get past the goal line. They took notes and names for every practitioner and procedure, recorded all vitals, kept our own IOs and noted when and what drugs were delivered. The probable law suits that will come from this will be heavily documented and hard to contest as witnesses were always present. WE are naturopaths, we kept our room doors shut as the hospital was a Mersa nightmare, we used our natural oils and infusers to keep the air sanitary and the attitude uplifting, we played our meditative music to keep our spirits up and we soon became the nurse’s favorites on the floor They would huddle up at shift change and argue who was going to get us for the shift. Everyone was stunned at how much we knew about our care and how we brought our own natural practices into the game, even the surgeon expressed surprise that we “had not sustained post-operative infections”. Huh? In the end, the Charge Nurses and Directors began to not like us so much as we insisted on proper sanitary practices, sent doctors and nurses back out to wash their hands before doing procedures, made them do the mandatory 6 second cleaning on my PICC lines and drains, and more. But thanks to all that, we eventually escaped medical incarceration and made it home. STRIKE 3

#4. I have already said hospitals are dangerous places, but no one expects them to be ignorant of proper practices, however its more the rule than the exception. Nutrition is one of the most important aspects of a good recovery and you cannot expect to get that from the hospital kitchen, if that’s what you call the assembly line process that passes for one in todays Managed Practice centers. Be prepared to supplement or even replace the c**p they bring you if you want to reduce your pain distress and not prolong your stay. The advice I have gotten from this blog is FANTASTIC and has been the most useful information I have found to date on the nutrition changes I need to make to deal with my new life long disability. Wish I had found it while I was still in the hospital but I have it now and I ordered the NIH diet book as well as downloaded the PDF, It’s a GREAT bible to start your recovery from. I am only 28 days post-surgery and lost over 35 pounds in the hospital. I made all the mistakes many of you have made in trying to form my own recovery diet, but I’m feeling much smarter and better now! It will be a long road back and maybe never be the same as it was, but with some common sense, the great advice of true experiencers and some True Grit, I am confident I can live a good healthy life eventually. IF I had followed all the crazy stuff the Hospital and Doctors told me to do, I might not be here at all. STRIKE 4 and you’re OUT!

THANK YOU to everyone who has contributed here! Its has made a HUGE difference in my knowledge and planning. I now have a long list of foods I like that I can eat in moderations and an even longer list of foods to avoid, that I had actually been eating since I got out and having horrible pain and digestive episodes from. REFLUX and massive acid releases are one of them and I have yet to find a good solution except Pepcid, which only occasionally works effectively, but maybe another contributor has that solution too.
BE WELL, BE BRAVE and BE SMART! NAMASTE’

Hi There,
I, like you, have had a colon resection surgery to remove a cancerous mass. In all, I think they took out about 8" of poop-chute. Wow, have things sucked ass since! While I'm blessed that I was diagnosed with stage 1 and I don't have to do any chemo or radiation, my digestion has gone all to hell. I used to have what I referred to as a "cast-iron stomach". I could eat anything and I was fine. But now? CONSTANT gas... like bad gas... gas that makes the dog sniff it's own butt before realizing it was me and leaving the room. You know it's bad when your new brand offends even yourself! Then there's the pooping. I recall before all this, I was a regular joe. 9:00 - 10:00AM every damn day! It was beautiful! You could set your watch based on my bowel movements! But now? Its like Hawaiian weather. Not pooping now? give it 20 minutes. I go about 3-4 times a day. It sucks... and it stinks! I'm anything BUT regular! But the worst part? The worst is that I almost NEVER get that "relieved" feeling that made a poop so awesome! I go... and it feels like I have to go again! Not to mention I look like Frankenstein's monster! By incision opened up and now I have a 1/2 inch thick scar! Its friggin disgusting!

Add to it that my doctor is something out of the 80's. No email!... oh, and he's NEVER in the office. I guess dealing with Assholes for a living has rubbed off on him.

I am one month into colon resection right now. I am in terrible pain right this minute. I ate cinnamon rolls this morning. Did anything like that bother you?

Thank you for such a in depth reply. I'm facing surgery on Friday and haven't been able to get a straight answer from any of the professionals with whom I'm dealing. I'm going to print off the book you recommend and follow the advice. Many thanks again! :-)

OMG , thanks for your blog. I laughed so hard i think I wet myself...and I haven't had surgery yet. Hope you're all healed and doing much better now. My surgery will be Jan 15th.