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Reply to "Is J-Pouch Surgery Worth it?"

I have had a J Pouch almost 26 years after having UC for 20 years, and have battled pouchitis for almost 23 years. Pouchitis is kind of a different animal and different disease than UC. The pain I had with UC was searing and severe and the UC inflammation riddled my colon to the point where it was dissolving when taken out. This is not to mention that dysplasia has been found in the colon 9 months earlier and I had been asked to lose weight in preparation for surgery in the interim.

My pouchitis is much more treatable and less aggressive than the UC was.

The course of the disease is what made my decision to have surgery and I have no regrets about it. For those whose UC isn’t responsive to non-surgical treatments, like me, there wasn’t much of a choice. I have wondered how the progress of my UC would have gone if Remicade and Humira and the other biological drugs were around back in the 1980s and early 1990s. I will never know the answer to that question but I suspect if those treatments were around I would have exhausted all non surgical treatments. Once that is done, surgery is the only option, unless one wishes to die of toxic megacolon or cancer, either of which would have happened if I had not had surgery (toxic megacolon within weeks of surgery, according to my surgeon, who said my colon dissolved in his hands when he took it out).

Good luck-

Last edited by CTBarrister
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