Spasms after part of colon removed
by Carla
(South Africa)
My mom had part of her colon removed last year, A large part and farily low down, so part of rectum was removed as well but luckily only needed an ileostomy bag for a few months as it was reversable!
During the year they put her on chemo and radiation as they had found some Lymph cells were affected, so instead of doing the bag reversal after 6 weeks she had the bag up to 6 months later so they could get on with the chemotherapy.
During the chemo she incurred huge bowel spasms, to the point that she would be doubled up in pain for 8 or so days at a time, lost loads of weight and they kept lowering the chemo drug to try help.. unfortunately it didnt seem to. She was on a low fibre diet, but nothing helped and 3 months into treatment they had to stop as she had lost too much weight and was too weak to continue.
They monitored her instead and reversed her bag when she was stronger. The spasms still occured but infrequently for a day and usually when her diet was to rich in fibre.
3 months ago they saw her cancer count was higher than usual, and they scanned and found a growth on her liver. That was immediately removed and now she is back on the chemotherapy, low dose to start this time to see if she can manage it this time round and if perhaps having no bag will help to avoid spasms. We were all thinking perhaps the gut was still tender after the surgery and having the bag and perhaps the chemo aggrivated it, and now it has had time to heal and so different out come.
She managed 2 full months, and now into her third she is only just slightly over 50% of the chemo dose she should be on, the spasms start again.. No one seems to know why, its not a side effect of the chemo and I am struggling to find if people with similar stories have ever had spasms like this, from chemo/diet or other.. Her encologist seems to think she is just lacking the enzym to digest/break down the chemo..
She finds the spasms to be unbearable and it scares me so much that she will stop the treatment again if they continue, as she also cannot really eat and then gets weak and so on so its a vicious cycle..
Please if anyone has had similar experiences or knows of a helpful solution please tell me, I have been suggesting the docs give her some sort of med that just zonks her out for the few days a month she gets these spasms to help her continue with the treatment... I see when she is relaxed (like when I give her a massage) the spasms definitely seem to not be so bad... but who can massage for days on end?
Look forward to any help, or comments
Thanks so much
