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Digestive Health | Last Active: Jul 9, 2023 | Replies (36)
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I just had my first attack with abscessed diverticula. The doctors said if it ruptured they would have to do surgery and I would be on a colostomy bag. That sounds wrong. If that happened in the ER would the colostomy be reversible? Should I go to another hospital that knows about colon resections? Should I consider preventative surgery?
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My first diverticulitis attack was 12 years ago. I ended up going by ambulance to the hospital bleeding profusely from my behind. Awful experience. I ended up needing blood transfusions couldn’t
raise my head due to losing so much blood. Spent four days in the hospital and they did a colonoscopy on me when I was there which was not fun. They came to the conclusion that I must’ve had a thin area in my colon due to diverticulitis.
Since then I had only had I think two or three attacks through the years and was put on Cipro and Flagyl each time. Nasty medicines. Made me so sick each time.
Then I was fine up until February 2022 and then I had nonstop flareups for three months with taking that nasty medicine each time. So after five trips to the ER and double medication‘s since the middle of February I pushed to get my colonoscopy moved up in April which showed a diverticulitis that was resolving. I continued having flare ups until I set up a sigmoidectomy at the beginning of June. My surgeon said that I had a smoldering area of diverticulitis in my sigmoid colon. After my surgery they did a pathology report on what they took out and said it was still infected and trying to abscess but there was no cancer. I can’t believe after all those antibiotics and pain and ER visits that nothing was resolving. Very frustrating. I am about 4 1/2 weeks post op for my surgery. I have my good days and my bad days but I am so happy that I had the surgery. It was totally the right thing to do. It never would’ve gone away and I would’ve just kept getting sicker from all the medications they were giving me. I didn’t want things to get so bad that I had to have emergency treatment. But for what I have heard is that they never know for sure if you will have a colostomy bag until they actually get in there. As long as they have two good pieces of area to stitch up they would not have to do a colostomy bag. When I went into my surgery my surgeon did not know for sure if I would need one or not. I was lucky and I did not need one. But if you do from what I’ve heard most of the time they are reversible. It never hurts to get a second opinion if you have the time. But if you are dealing with a lot of pain I would try to get things done as soon as possible.
Good Luck with this.