getting this rectocele to improve!

Hi Kiki

I had a rectocele issue last week, and got that bulgy perineum thing and a fissure. The bulgy perineum was evident when I was trying to empty my bowel. The whole thing, all on both sides of my anus, well ... bulged out. I tried splinting, to no avail, and I tried supporting the perineum. That worked a bit, but nothing would produce a decent-sized motion and relieve the feelings of fullness and pressure, even after I decided to give it a miss and carry on with my normal activities, even though I felt like I had a football up my a***.

The following day I had four bowel motions, the first quite hard, and producing the fissure, the others quite soft. I did watch my fluid intake the following day. I am sure it made the difference. Boy, was I relieved! Next time, I think I will give up and ignore it first off. No amount of wriggling and shifting around helped in the least. I think I just had a log jam, possibly from not drinking enough during a hot day of heavy physical work. "If at first you don't succeed, your body will remind you when it is ready", is my new mantra. Just trust your body. I figure that it has to have a load to unload, and it has to be the right consistency, and it has to be in the mood, for the bowel motion to work smoothly first time, but your body does come back and remind you later. You just have to relax about it, and get on with what you have to do, then take time out when you gotta go.

I am fine this week, even though it has been a week of physical exertion, re-laying all the reticulation in the garden, crawling around under the bushes; tugging hard on bits of hose, hoping they will come out; pulling apart old, hard poly hose and removing fittings etc. It seems to have been a week of pushing and shoving. There have been a few times when I have thought, "shouldn't have done that", but here I am on day three, late at night, and my POPs are feeling really good. I am quite amazed about it. The rest of me is aching, but you can't have it all, eh?

Cheers

Louise

Hi Louise, I just read your article on your rectocele issue last week and I had so much compassion, because of all the similarities in your condition and mine, the constipation thing is bad enough but trying to hold everything together in the stomach and pushing out a log at the same time, is almost unbearable. When it first happened to me, I was quite scared, I felt if I pushed too hard something important would come out. The excercisng always seems to work for me, this morning I had been twice but there was still something in there that was as you say like a football, so I went down to the horse pasture and cleaned up a whole bunch of their poo, old hay and deadfall, started a fire, raked, burned, etc. Low and behold when I came back to the house 2hours later, a large poo, it looked to be about two feet long, what a relief. What I have found really works well is to drink a glass of water every 10 minutes for about an hour, then I lay on the floor and massage the cecum just below the navel, that always starts something moving, the splinting I found just makes the prolapsed rectum come out further, but sometimes you have no choice. Glad you feel better. Chester.

Chester, I think you are right on with the exercise thing. When you rake, sweep and shovel stuff and move up and down, your abdominal muscles work quite hard as long as you maintain your lumbar curve and use your legs, and use your whole body. I imagine that it is a quite similar effect as massaging your stomach. Also, doing exercise is very good at taking your mind off your guts, so you worry less about it. Also, and very importantly, exercise burns up adrenaline, so your body leave flee or fight mode, and your blood supply is directed away from the extremities used for fleeing and fighting, and back to the important area of metabolism, so digestion and gut mobility resumes. Interesting idea about the cecum!

L

I am always amazed as I read about all of your outdoor work. I love to work in my gardens too. However, we don't have any deadly snakes to contend with here where I live. Don't you worry with so many creatures crawling around and you pulling weeds etc? You never know what you'll come face to face with. On the plus side, I guess seeing something that could kill me would make me forget all about my POPs! JUst wondering.

Hi Kaismom

Nah! It's really just me playing Crocodile Dundee.

But seriously, I guess there are quite a few venomous creepy crawlies in Australia. We just live with it. We have door closers on all our outside doors. I never stick my hand under a bush if I cannot see what is or is not under there. I never stick my finger down a hole cos I know that somebody dug it, and somebody else might have eaten that animal and be living in there itself. I don't tangle with spiderwebs unless it is with a long stick. I don't wander around outside in the dark without doing a lot of stomping. I never walk out the door in summer without scanning the verandah for snakes and big, scarey lizards. I very rarely encounter anything, but once too often! Oh yeah. Mouse and rat control is the most effective way of not inviting snakes to live near the house and sheds.

Our kids lived most of their lives down in our wooded creek while they were growing up. There were only a few rules.

No fires without an adult knowing about it, then only when the grass is green.
Make lots of noise to scare snakes away.
Don't put any body parts in spots where you cannot see clearly what is there.
Watch out for snakes in the cool of the morning, at night, and in late autumn and late winter, when the weather is warming up, but they are still too slow to get out of your way.
Don't play with redback spiders (close relatives of the black widow).
Most living creatures mean you no harm; leave them alone and they will leave you alone.
Don't cross our boundary fences into other properties.
Come back when I ring the big brass bell.

I am the only member of the family who has come anywhere close to being bitten by anything serious. The kids are all still alive. Most of their injuries have been encounters with fences, hard ground, kitchen knives and tools. We have never even had any broken bones, except when DS2 was helping me with the shopping and dropped a frozen 3.5kg turkey on my toe. The only times any of our kids have got lost was shopping in a big chain store, falling asleep as a toddler under a spare bed, and having a late afternoon nap with the dog under a big shrub and forgetting to wake up when the sun set.

We could live indoors and wrap our kids in cottonwool, but then they would only have to learn the same safety rules when they grew up a bit. I am sure it is the fear that binds us, not the danger itself.

Cheers

Louise

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my question. I have wondered for years about how people in Australia managed when outdoors. Here in the US we have so many shows on tv about the world's deadliest animals and most of them seem to come from Australia. My 11 year old son sees them and says, "Cool! Can we go there on vacation?" I guess it's probably not much different then living in Texas here, as they have their share of creepy crawlies too. Just seems like you are blessed with an abundance.

P.S. I am still jiggling with success. In fact, it is the only thing that really helps my rectocele at all(even if it is short lived).

Kaismom do you mind explaining this. I'm sure it's some technical move that I don't know about but need to! Many thanks

Hi FC12

Jiggling is my thing. See if you can search it from the Search box. I have described it so many times. When you have a page of hits, use your browser's Find On This Page feature on each topic in turn. This allows you to scan all the comments under each topic quickly for highlighted text.

Also have a look at my new topic about Pooing Posture, for my new observations.

Cheers

Louise