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.
Thank you. However, food that cannot be broken down no longer can pass through the small bowel into the large bowel, because the large one is no longer here.
Thank you. I am a little confused because you said Food that cannot be broken down passes through the small bowel into the large bowel - I don't have the large one anymore.
To be honest without being involved in your care or having access to your medical records it is difficult to tell you much more about your situation.
A hemicolectomy involves removing part of the large bowel ( not the whole thing that is called a colectomy) therefore we would assume you still have a portion of large bowel remaining.
I hope this is helpful but please do speak with your team if you have further questions or are experiencing any symptoms at the moment.
Thank you. I had a grade 1 - 2 Retroperitoneal Liposarcoma dedifferentiated, thus to have that removed I also had a hemicolectomy, distal pancreatectomy, splenectomy and left nephrectomy. Hope I've spelled them OK.
