Hello Steve67,

                     welcome to the fellow reversal travellers from uranus club, you are still a novice a few weeks out and have still to attain full statearse. it helps to have a sense of humour since it will be tested over the coming months.What you describe is perfectly normal, and will improve with time,all that is at question is how much and for how long ?, since we are all individual and the only way to find out is with hindsight.Your bowel is surrounded by muscle that works in a continuous sequential wave motion interacting with the brain to expel waste.By your own admission you have just had a chunk removed,disrupting the sequence,which needs to re-establish a working understanding.Further complicating the issue is a period of inactivity whilst the stoma was in situ.l personally feel the length of time can have a bearing on recovery.Mine was in for 14 months and l feel l suffered from muscle memory fade.Think of a newborn who arrives with no programming ,just expels as needed,and gradually links bowel and brain to work in unison.

                                                                                                                                       l am back to my "new normal" of one to two visits a day,with usually a second quick secondary visit in the evening.My record was fifteen in 45 minutes,stand up and rapidly sit again,so if you can go an hour between you are well ahead of my curve,which was complicated by gallbladder removal leading to no control of excessive bile production and proctitis from radiotherapy.

                                                                                                     Fear not you are on the right road and as long you stay WC,well connected and close by, things will improve and you get back on the move,but in the right direction!,

                                                  in the meantime just keep practising the Linford Christie method of movements

                    David,

Hi David,

Thanks for your very full and informative reply which does give me considerable comfort. I guess I'll just have to remain patient and await my brain and bowel getting into gear togther. I just hadn't been warned it could be this bad at the beginning and even generalised descriptions I've read on relevant websites don't really give the full picture in simply referring  to frequency and reduced quantities. I just didn't realise it could be this bad. Thanks a lot for taking the time and trouble to provide me with tis re-asurance. As for sense of humour, I'll do my best, although in these difficult times even that's not so eay, is it?!

Thanks again

Steve67 

Hi David,

Thanks for your very full and informative reply which does give me considerable comfort. I guess I'll just have to remain patient and await my brain and bowel getting into gear togther. I just hadn't been warned it could be this bad at the beginning and even generalised descriptions I've read on relevant websites don't really give the full picture in simply referring  to frequency and reduced quantities. I just didn't realise it could be this bad. Thanks a lot for taking the time and trouble to provide me with tis re-asurance. As for sense of humour, I'll do my best, although in these difficult times even that's not so eay, is it?!

Thanks again

Steve67 

Hello steve67,

                    just a thought,presumably your medical team would have mentioned loperimide to you to slow the bowel down should it not settle down over the coming weeks,which they can prescribe.l had to resort to them and indeed to this day still take a single tablet per day to keep my bowel steady.So if things get to the point where you cannot cope,speak to your team,

                                                                                                         David

Thanks David. Yes, I have tried a loperimide on medical advice in an attempt to get an uninterrupted night's sleep, which worked once it kicked in during the second half of the night, but then constipated me for much of the next day. Actually, my problem isn't diarrhoea or extreme urgency but the inability to evacuate anything other than a small quantity, whch having been done is followed shortly after by the feeling of needing to go again, with similar results. So the frequency is it seems to me a neessary and healthy consequence of what's really wrong, the grossly insufficient evacuation. So loperamide inhibiting evacuation didn't help and I don't think is the answer to my particular problem. Many thanks anyway.

Frankie enjoyed your reply and regrets that in a London garden sadly there's not sufficient space for sheep or cattle - but we hope yours are thriving!

Steve