Thanks so much for the reply. My understanding is I still have part of my colon. The cancer was in the rectum & after initially planning to take all the colon because I have a gene in my family making us high risk for bowel cancer my gene testing was completed just before surgery and I did not have the faulty gene. So they only took part of the colon so I could have better control. Anyway your suggestion about the pouch irrigation is similar to what I was thinking but the surgeon reckoned it would not help. So thought I would ask if anyone has similar symptoms and how they deal with it. I vary between diarrhoea & very firm BMs. The firm option seemed better to cope with from a control point of view but not so much now I have this painful compaction problem. Will try diet changes.