Bowel endo surgery and enema

[luthien]

Help!!

Right so I have had a lap to diagnose and excise endo last November, they needed a bowel surgeon present as I had a small amount of endo on the rectum, so need another op. Following my check up at 4 months post lap, we decided that I would go ahead for the bowel lap as I still have some symptoms that seems to be associated with endo there.

I've booked in for July 24th, and had a chat with the bowel surgeon, he said they'll do an enema to clean out my bowel should they need to do anything internally; it should all be on the outer surface, but that's fine. What does an enema involve? And will I be awake? Do I need to eat less / specific things before? What do I need to take into account after? I've been told it's the usual fasting an x amount of time before the op (which will be in my pre-op letter), just wondering what I can do to help.

I usually take prebiotic tablets to help my gut as sometimes it gets irritable ... they're just Holland and Barrett ones, but should I stop taking them or keep taking them? Can I take them after as normal?

I think I was too embarrassed to ask after the consultation with the surgeon; hadn't realised he wanted to do a finger up bum examination during it until he got a female nurse to assist, was told to remove my bottoms behind a curtain and lie down sideways unexpected lol!

[Aisha12]

I’ve had an enema before and you don’t really need to do anything for it. They’ll just put a small tube like thing into your rectum and flush in some water. It’s waaayyyyy better than the finger examination *rolls eyes*. Afterwards you’ll just feel like using the loo, that’s all. No symptoms after that. The enema just clears out your bowel, so if your bowel isn’t already empty, you’ll just feel like you’ll need to go to the loo. No symptoms or anything else like that after the enema.

Wishing you luck x

[luthien in reply to Aisha12]

thanks, I was so worried what they do. that makes it sound okay!