I hope this doesn't seem a silly question. Part of my major surgery nearly two years ago was a left hemicolectomy. I've never been that good at anatomy! Please would you tell me if that is the large or the small colon / bowel? Thank you.
So, a hemi colectomy is when the large bowel, called the descending colon on the left side, has the cancer removed, and the ends of the bowel are re-joined.
I forgot to say the bowel didn't have cancer. I had a retroperitoneal liposarcoma and the left bowel had to be removed, plus other organs, in order to remove the sarcoma.
The small bowel is between your stomach and large bowel as seen in the BBC Bitesize diagram diagram on the digestive tract.
It is within the small bowel that nutrients from your food are broken down and reabsorbed into your blood.
Food that cannot be broken down passes through the small bowel into the large bowel where water is reabsorbed into the blood. The rest of the food is then passed out through the anus.
