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Hi. Would you take a minute & tell me if you would recommend BCIR now that you have it?
How often have you had pouchitis?
Did you get your old j pouch removed?
Is sex painful? Or was it....& it got better?

I had a colectomy, j pouch formation, & loop ileostomy in July. I am between surgeries. My surgeon said it would be easier to remove my j pouch now, than later, should I choose to. Since then lots of pain, def painful sex, & what appears to be 3 episodes of pouchitis though I am a pretty healthy eater...I am a 35 yo female
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MaryMom,
Way too soon to be considering a BCIR or K pouch (essentially the same idea with a couple of modifications on it).
You are only 3-4 months post-op and not even close to being healed. It takes a full year to heal and have all of the swelling go down. You will not know how you and your pouch get along until you have passed the 1 yr anniversary.
As for sex and k pouch (or BCIR), they are both abdominal pouches with stomas that are usually situated around where your temp ileo is (lower right quadrant).
I cannot speak about sex pre-pouch because I hadn't had much to start with and it was 35 yrs ago but I can say that when the pouch is in a happy place, sex is great.
There are no problems, conflicts or uncomfortable feelings and my anatomy works just fine. But please understand that when you have a k pouch (or BCIR) they remove the rectum and close you off down there. (thus the expression Barbie Butt). So you are a bit tender in those parts for a while.
As for the pouchitis quesiton...k pouches tend to get irrigated on a regular basis because the stoma in at about the middle level of the pouch and not a bottom exit like in a J pouch so we inject water into our pouches and swirl it around a bit to clear the pouch out...some people believe that that is why we tend to have less incidence of pouchitis than j pouches. We also need our output to remain liquidy so we do not use thickeners or bowel slowers. (lomotil etc).
The fact that our pouches really get cleared out nicely must help to a certain degree. But you will be allowed to do that too once your pouch is a bit more mature if you feel that it will help you (it is sort of like giving yourself an enema).
Patience, give yourself time and allow things to settle down before you contemplate any more surgery.
Sharon
MaryMom, I fully agree with Sharon about giving your pouch and related plumbing time to heal before even considering a BCIR or K pouch. Removal of a J pouch is a major operation. As far as the BCIR is concerned, I have had one for 19 months and it has worked out very well for me. I had pouchitis during the first 3 months post-op while my pouch was developing to its full size and it was easily controlled with antibiotics. I have not had a recurrence and have not felt a need to irrigate my pouch; I insert water only if the contents become too thick to pass through the catheter naturally. Sex with a BCIR is no different than if you never had abdominal surgery. The BCIR program in Florida (where I had my surgery) has a good website at www.bcir.com where you can get more information about the procedure and they can provide you with a list of about 300 who have a BCIR and have consented to talk with others about their experiences with it. Hang in there and I hope that you won’t need additional surgery.
Bill
Ok, Got it.
But I am still not ready to say that you should switch before even giving the j pouch a fair run.
Just to let you know that they do not always remove the j pouch but when possible re-use it to create the k pouch or BCIR...a pouch is a pouch...they just use a length of your small bowel to create the valve and attache the whole thing to the abdomen while closing off the bottom.
That said, I know of no surgeon who would do it before you even give the j pouch a try unless there is a physiological reason to not hook you up eg. lack of sphincter control, severe fistulas or other deal breakers.
Hope that your pouch calms down and plays nice with you
Sharon

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