• Home
• >   Patients Speak
• >   Our-book

Chapter Sixteen: Surgical Adhesions, Bowel Obstruction

Eight Prior Surgeries - Ginny’s Story

After eight surgeries and two serious falls, my body had become severely adhered and I was in nearly constant pain. The adhesions were so strong that they began to affect my posture; they caused my back and neck to ache and the pain made life very difficult. Adhesions in my abdominal cavity were closing my bowels, preventing waste from moving. After eating, I would be curled up in a ball in severe pain. It was humiliating and ex­tremely painful.

I had already under­gone a resec­tion surgery to remove bowel obstructions (essentially ad­hesions) by cutting, then rejoining my intestines. I soon found myself in a vicious cycle of pain and hospitalizations. I needed surgery to reduce the adhe­sions and relieve my pain, but the surgeries would cause more adhesions to form, necessitating more surgeries. So I had to find a more non-invasive way to solve this problem.

I began desperately to search for other treatment op­tions. I worked at an acupuncture clinic at the time, and one of our patients told me that she was receiving treatment to re­duce adhesions at a physical therapy clinic called Clear Passage Therapies (CPT). I spoke with my gastroenterologist about the therapy and he told me, “It can’t hurt to try it.” I scheduled an appointment immediately.

By the time I found CPT, my health was plummeting. At my initial evaluation, my therapist told me there was very little mobility in my abdominal organs. She was also concerned that I was becoming adhered in the muscles and support structures on the front of my body.

I attended treatment for an hour at a time twice a week and found that my pain reduced markedly. Before long, I stopped experiencing pain in my bowels, neck, and back. Things in life that most people take for granted, but that had been denied to me for so long, slowly began to return. I can still remember the first day I was finally able to have a bowel move­ment without pain or laxatives, and the first time I was finally able to eat without pain. It was amazing.

At one point, my insur­ance decided it would no longer cover the cost of my treatment, and I was forced to stop attending. I worked relentlessly with my insurance compa­ny until they finally agreed to continue covering my treatment, but it was too late. Adhesions had formed again and blocked my intestines. I was back in the hospital with an obstructed bowel for 13 days. I knew I had to return to CPT if I didn’t want an­other surgery. They helped my body recover and broke down other adhesions that had formed.

Over the time I have attended therapy at CPT, I have met many patients. After therapy, most people tell me that their pain is relieved, their adhesions are reduced, and they never have to return again.

My body, on the other hand, is different from most. For one reason or another, my body continually forms adhesions. My doctor says my body is an “adhesion factory.”

Because my body continually produces adhesions, I choose to return to CPT for treatment. The therapists not only help reduce any pain I experience, they also prevent other adhesions from forming by increasing the mobility and flexibil­ity of my organs and tissues. I know that if I didn’t have CPT, I would end up back in the hospital.

I cannot say enough about CPT. I would recommend them 250%. I even had my husband attend after a serious car accident. He was in so much pain that it hurt for him to even be touched. But today, he’s out working in the garden.

If they were able to help someone described as an “ad­hesion factory,” I know they will be able to help others who experience pain or adhesion formation as a normal response to healing.

Twenty Years of Surgeries after Partial Hysterectomy - Katrina’s Story

 

Some women have experienced so many surgeries in their lifetimes that their bodies continue to form adhesions, even years after the surgeries end. Ginny shared her personal journey through years of surgeries and the subsequent pain and dysfunction she experienced. Because her body was so traumatized by her surgeries, her doctor said that her body continues to form adhesions.

Katrina, one of our former patients, is much like Ginny. In fact, when Katrina called our clinic to see if treatment would be appropriate for her, we discussed former patients like Ginny, who had experienced similar problems.

After speak­ing with a CPT thera­pist, Katrina knew she wanted to come for treatment. Although she felt she was com­ing on blind faith, Ka­trina had high hopes that this alternative option for the breakdown of her adhesions would work, and she was very optimistic.

Her pain and dysfunction had started almost 20 years earlier. After a partial hysterectomy, Katrina began experiencing pain and had to undergo a subsequent surgery to remove her ovaries and a partial bowel obstruction.

Just two years later, she had to have another surgery to remove adhesions that formed beneath her previous incision, causing her bowel to become partially obstructed again.

Over the next 14 years, Katrina endured eight more surgeries and procedures to treat adhesions, bowel obstruc­tions, and numerous other dysfunctions that had resulted from her devastating cycle of surgeries.

Katrina told us, “I was in a lot of pain during those years, but I had to keep working. You just take as little pain medication as you can and deal with the pain until it becomes too much, and you need anoth­er surgery.”

After surgery to remove adhesions in May of 2004, Ka­trina knew she need­ed to find another option. As each week progressed, she ex­perienced more and more pain. “It’s hard to explain the pain unless you have had it,” Katrina told us. “You get a lot of abdominal swelling and localized pain in certain spots. The swelling gets really bad and your clothes don’t fit. At night, your body throbs. It just gets to the point where it never goes away and the pain overrides your thoughts. You can’t even walk properly because you are in so much pain and you feel your body drawing up.”

It was out of her pain and desperation that Katrina searched for other options on the Internet and found our clinic.

Katrina noticed changes almost immediately after treat­ment with us and told us, “The therapists worked on my rec­tum one time and the next day I had a normal bowel move­ment! By the end of the week, intercourse pain was completely gone — it was amazing. Some of the scars felt thinner or had disappeared.”

Once her treatment was finished, we explained to Ka­trina that her body would make adjustments over the following months as her organs and systems learned to function without the adhesions. Katrina was happy to find that her body kept im­proving over time and told us, “I had more energy and people told me I looked healthier.”

As time passed, though, Katrina began to notice some pain gradually increasing in her body. Although our treatment successfully reduced many of the adhesions that existed in her body, we could not prevent her body’s natural process of build­ing more adhesions.

The majority of the women we treat never have to re­turn to us for treatment. However, there are some women, like Katrina and Ginny, whose bodies continue to form adhesions. Although patients who need ongoing care with us are rare, we can at least provide them with an alternative to cyclical surgery.

When Katrina’s body started to produce more adhe­sions again, she was faced with a choice: either more surgery or returning to us for treatment. She was happy to return to us for a natural treatment. We were once again able to reduce the new adhesions that formed and reduce the pain and symptoms she was experiencing.

Although we genuinely hope that Katrina will not have to return again, we cannot control how her body produces adhesions. If she needs us again, we will be here as a safe and natural alternative to surgery.

Breast Surgery, Inguinal Surgery and Six Abdominal Surgeries - Reese’s Story  

I am sure it was destiny that I would speak to Belinda; I just “knew” that wherever this woman was, was where I was headed to. We instantly connected and I felt as if I had known her all my life. 

Besides that, I had never met anyone who could re­ally understand what I was going through, the pain and agony I had felt, and the despair that I was facing. I was at my wit’s end and had given up on finding some way to defeat these ever persistent ab­dominal adhesions that had taken hold of my poor weakening body. 

Eight days before heading to Clear Passages Therapies (CPT), I had learned from my surgeon that abdominal adhe­sions had grown back for the 7th time.  He wanted to put a tube into my stomach to help release some pressure and evalu­ate my situation.  I chose not to be hospitalized and left his of­fice more broken than I had ever felt in my life. 

I could not understand why my body was doing this!  I just had surgery to save my life not 12 weeks before and at that time, the adhesions were strangulating my stomach in half and I had eight to ten  adhered kinks in my small intestine.  The adhesions also devastated my female organs, which had to be removed.  

Thank God, I had found Sanoviv Medical Institute in Rosario, Mexico.  For the last year they treated me integra­tively, cleansing mycoplasma from my body. This saved me from having parts of my organs removed during my surgery in July of 2008. Although Sanoviv was awesome and helped me greatly, they could not stop the adhesions from taking me over after surgery. 

Needless to say, I was devastated and sat in my car and cried my eyes out.  How could I tell my husband?  What would become of the quality of my life?

Talking with Be­linda that day changed my life forever. But, I am getting ahead of myself so, let’s start with some facts.

I was a typical tomboy and have all the scars to prove it.  I have had many falls, accidents and illnesses.  Just to name a few; I was bit by a brown recluse spider twice, developed SLE (Lupus) because of it, suffered several miscar­riages,  I was rear-ended with severe whiplash and chest bruis­ing, swallowed a fish bone and had throat surgery to remove it, had malignant breast surgery – and then all hell broke loose with my abdominal adhesions.  I had to close my business and stop my professional singing career.

Within two weeks of the breast surgery in June 2006, my abdomen swelled up like I was eight months pregnant.  I was hospitalized and no tests of any kind showed anything was wrong. After six days of suffering in the hospital, I had explor­atory surgery. The surgeons found adhesions, cysts, and tumors growing out of control. 

I had no idea that my life had been at risk until I awoke in the hospital with tubes coming out of me, and I could not move.  It was a wonder I did not pop from all the pressure. But, I really did pop as tissues tore in my abdominal wall and both inguinal walls (in my groin) from all the pressure inside of me.

To shorten a long torturous story, I had six full abdomi­nal surgeries, appendicitis, a 6x8 patch holding my intestines in, one left breast surgery, and a double inguinal hernia repair with two 4x4 patches holding my lower abdomen wall together, all in the course of two and a half years. 

Now, once more, I was facing yet another surgery; the scariest part was these abdominal adhesions were growing back faster and faster… I just had surgery 12 weeks ago!  How could this be? 

I heard it from more doctors I can list that there is no cure… abdominal adhesions were killing me slowly and there was nothing I could do about it. I tried all the great hospitals and clinics that I could find in those two plus years to help me…they all said the same thing.  “Your surgeon knows you best and our protocol are the same as his. Just go back home and have him surgically re­move them again.” 

I was horrified to think I would have to live this way.  My surgeon saved my life more than once and I am so grateful for him, but I did NOT want to live this way, having surgery after surgery just to stay alive.

I was backed into a corner with no time to lose; the adhesions were clogging up my system, affecting my breathing, and strangulating my intestines so I could not eat any food and could barely drink liquids without throwing up. I knew my time was running out before I would need surgery to release the armored grip on my internal organs strangulating the life out of me. 

My life was great outside of this disease. Awesome hus­band, a thriving antique/photography business, and a great sing­ing career. I wasn’t going to give it all up now!  I was hell-bent on beating this disease but, I was so tired and weak and felt so defeated. 

Then I got a return call from Belinda at Clear Passage Therapies (CPT). After that conversation, I knew what I had to do; I began to pack my bags and plan my recovery. 

Before I knew it, I was on a plane heading to Gainesville, FL.  I could barely get through the airport with my luggage in tow, cringing in pain and breathing heavily with each step I took. I was so deter­mined and focused.

I will never forget limping into the clinic that first day, holding and rubbing my abdomen in so much pain.  But, from that moment on, as the day progressed, I knew I would be taken care of. Unlike most of the doctors I had been to, this place actually WANTED to hear of all my pains and aches and problems! They were gentle and loving and very considerate each step of the way.  They explained every technique they performed and why it would help me. This place was like an oasis of hope in a desert of despair for me.  Was this treatment for real?  Why do I say that?  Because two miracles happened to my body that first day of treatment. 

Focusing on the most urgent of needs for me, they im­mediately went to work on my abdominal obstructions. The therapists, with their talented hands manually performing the Wurn Technique® movements released the  strangulating, burn­ing, and stabbing pain right below my diaphragm that I had suf­fered from since all this began – over two years ago!  I could barely wrap my mind around what had happened.  I could feel it happening deep inside my body, but could I dare to believe that this would work?  I was fearful of jinxing it!  But, as I took my walks and went through the day, I could barely believe how much better I felt. I was no longer near tears in pain with each breath and step I took! I had a total of five bowel movements that night and the next morning. I was beside myself! I literally felt my body give in and let go!
The second miracle happened when Larry worked the outside calf of my right leg. I had chronic stabbing pain that never went away and had been there since 1992 when I got the bit by the brown recluse spiders and had caused me to limp all those years.  No doctors could ever tell me why I had it. They called it a “mystery pain” that I would just have to live with.  Larry worked hard and released that burning, debilitating, deep painful pulling sensation that had bound me!  I could feel him free the adhesions as he worked layer by layer. I was in total disbelief because I was not limping when I left that first day and have not limped since!  That burning pain in my abdomen has not returned either. 

Oh, I must mention this… I am a rock and roll singer and since having so many tubes down my throat, scar tissue had formed, causing my throat to close when I sang, and it felt horrible.  Larry worked his magic all down the front and sides of my neck, voice box, and upper chest.  I now can sing stronger and with more ease than I have in years.  Larry gave me back my singing voice!

Session after session, day after day…my body was slow­ly and methodically worked on.  As each hour passed, my body was loosening up and moving with less effort, and with less and less pain.  I slowly began to eat soft foods and soups…no problem!  My system was working just fine!  On my fourth day of treatment, my 50th birthday, I enjoyed baked salmon and mashed potatoes!  It was the best meal of my life! 

I have shocked my surgeon!  He wanted to know what was done and how it was done.  He had tears in his eyes and was so happy for me.  He truly did not want to cut into me again.  My husband is just so happy to see me out of pain and to have his wife back.  I am bouncing off the walls with en­ergy and gratefulness.  I truly feel like I had a full body renovation from the tip of my toes to the top of my head.  Long gone are those migraines and waking up feeling 80 years old. 

The only side effect was some tenderness in areas worked on and way too many positive effects to list.  Imagine that? 95% less pain, ease of movement, better mobility, able to eat and drink with proper digestive health, loads of energy, no more migraines, a bounce in my walk, a smile on my face and hope and song in my heart.  What more can a girl ask for? CPT manual physical therapy makes sense – and it works.  It is as simple as that. 

Complications and Bowel Obstruction after Abdominal Surgery - Mae’s Story

As a woman in my fifties, I love to feel good, embrace life and live it to its maximum. My great-grandfather rode his bicycle every day until he died in his nineties, and I’d like to do the same.

I have been extremely healthy and athletic throughout most of my life; in fact, I was a gymnast and ballerina during school, and a physical fitness devotee afterwards. I had some fleeting abdominal problems in my forties, which were diag­nosed as probably Candida or ulcer related, but I was still going strong.

While visiting Italy three years ago, I began to experi­ence serious complications with my health:  I suddenly began to lose my breath, and then I lost consciousness. Later I discovered that my husband had first tried to wake me by pouring water over me. When that didn’t work, he desperately slapped me and shook me until I finally came back to my senses.

When I fainted again four hours later, someone called an ambulance. Meanwhile, my husband frantically performed CPR and almost fractured a rib to revive me. That time, I was unconscious for almost four minutes.

I was hospitalized for tests for seven days, but all the tests came back negative or inconclusive. Suspecting a small bowel obstruction, the physicians would not allow me to eat solid food. My weight dropped to 98 pounds (I’m 5’2” and nor­mally weigh about 110 or 112). 

When I was finally released, I wondered if the cause of this unexplainable event was air pollution since, during this time, I had heard that several people had suddenly lost consciousness throughout Italy. Still, I had an early history of bowel problems, and I remembered the hospital physician restricting my food intake, due to his concerns about my bowels.

Three years later, in September of 2008, I began experi­encing something that felt similar to a bowel obstruction, with pressure on my rectum. As the month neared its end, I start­ed to feel unusually weak. Then once again, I fainted, and again my husband forcefully revived me (this time with my son). My memory took me back to my terrifying experience in Italy; then fear set in. Because of the recurrence, I knew it had to be something serious.

I went to my doctor immediately, and requested a pre­scription for oxygen. In the past, oxygen enabled me to feel better when I knew I was close to fainting.

I could always tell when I was going to faint: I would get a terrible pain on my right side, by my colon, in the morning or evening. My legs and feet would become ice cold, I would feel extremely weak and have to lie down. Then my intestines would rumble and they would feel very weird, almost as if worms were slowly slithering through them. My abdomen would then distend and I would have to change into pants with­out a belt so that I could breathe bet­ter. Gradually, my breath would slow­ly slip away from me and my tongue would turn white. It wouldn’t feel as if I were being strangled; it would feel as if my breath were going away, never to return. It was the worst feeling imaginable. It felt like imminent death.

During these times, I was often unable to eliminate. I sought help by having a few colonics, visiting more doctors and completing more medical tests. 

After I fainted another time, I decided to go to a differ­ent hospital where I hoped they might provide us with some answers.

After four days, a colonoscopy, a barium swallow test to see if my small intestines were working properly, and many other of tests, I was informed that I was perfectly healthy. The doctor never told me that adhesions cannot actually be seen by diagnostic tests – only by surgery.

Having no further rea­son to hold me in the hospital, the doctors became some­what verbally disrespectful and treated me as if I were a hypo­chondriac. For example, when I awoke in the middle of the night feeling the onset of the symptoms that generally preceded my unconsciousness, I asked the nurses for oxygen. After numer­ous pleas, they very reluctantly gave it to me, at last. The next morning, the doctor was furious with me for “hassling” his nursing staff. I was “being ridiculous and needed to leave,” he said to me. I think he truly believed I was just trying to fool them, for some reason. However, he allowed me to remain be­cause it was the weekend, and I had the “right” to meet with the gastroenterologist to discuss my test on Monday.

In the meantime, my husband continued to research about small bowel obstructions online, and found valuable in­formation. He learned there was a Catch-22 with bowel ob­structions and surgery. Surgery could remove the obstruction, but it would often cause another one to form.

We shared this information with the gastroenterologist, and he agreed. He suggested I change to a liquid diet and start taking a mild laxative daily. I asked him if I could return to the healthy state my body was in before the obstruction, and I was dismayed to hear him say that would be impossible.

After all of these experiences, I was terrified to in­gest anything but liquids, so I slowly became very weak. As my weight continued to decrease, I lived in fear of another fainting episode. I dreaded the night, scared to close my eyes. I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to stay awake and be vigilant of all of my symptoms. I felt absolutely helpless and couldn’t imagine continuing my life this way.

Through lengthy research, my husband found Clear Pas­sage Therapies (CPT) and, within a week, I flew to Florida. I had no strength, and I was scared, but it didn’t matter. I had hope and faith that I was going to be well.

When the therapists examined me, they noticed that my initial bowel symptoms started after I had several bladder infections following an early appendectomy and (more recent) C-section surgeries. When they felt my pelvis and abdomen, they immediately found extensive adhesions in these areas. They told me that some of the adhesions at my surgical sites felt three inches thick.

They slowly be­gan peeling these adhe­sions apart, layer by layer. Though it felt uncomfort­able and painful at times, I was happy to notice posi­tive results, almost imme­diately. In the end, my ad­hesions were so extensive that I stayed at CPT for two weeks. At four hours a day, that was a very intense schedule, but I could feel the changes in my body. I felt that they were saving my life.

Over the course of therapy, I started to regain my strength. My belly went from feeling like an inflated ball of steel to feeling like soft skin again. A few days into therapy, I was fi­nally able to have a bowel movement again – this time, without any pressure in my rectum. My body began to function better; my energy began to return.

I started eating solid foods again. In the weeks following therapy, I gained 12 pounds. It was incredible to eat something crunchy and fearlessly enjoy it.

When I left CPT, I told them they saved my life, for I really believe they did. I remember the feeling of helplessness before I went to CPT, and I never want to relive that again. I don’t want to live thinking about death, or to deal with physi­cians who become abusive when they can’t provide answers. I was given a healthy body to use and feel great. That body was slowly taken from me because of adhesions, but I now have it back.

Multiple Surgeries for Bowel Obstructions - Teena’s Story

When I woke after surgery and looked down at my stomach, I could see staples cinching my abdomen. Although I was only 19, I knew the staples meant my doctors had decided to perform a hysterectomy.

From the time I was 15, I had recurring ovarian cysts and severe pain. The pain became so awful that my doctors suspected I had endometriosis — a condition in which the lin­ing of the uterus grows in places outside of the uterus. They told me that they would have to perform surgery to diagnose and remove the endometriosis. They also warned me that they would have to perform a hysterectomy if the endometriosis was severe.

So, at age 19, I underwent the surgery. As I stared at my stomach in disbelief, the doctor came in to inform me that the staples in my stomach were not from a hysterectomy. I breathed a sigh of relief. They told me that during the surgery, they discovered my bowels were almost completely blocked from adhesions. They re­moved the adhered area and were optimistic that my pain would decrease.

However, not even a year later, I be­gan vomiting regularly with severe pain. For nine months, I could barely keep food down. My doctors finally discovered I had appendicitis and I underwent surgery. The physicians suspected the chronic appendicitis had also created adhesions near my bowels, and they hoped that removing my appendix would prevent further adhesions.

I remained relatively pain- and symptom-free for a cou­ple of years. I was even fortunate enough to become pregnant and deliver a beautiful son.

After his birth, I began experiencing pain in my uterus. Over the next few years, my pain increased and I started to have problems with constipation. Given my history, my doctors suspected I had another blockage and performed surgery. Sure enough, they found adhesions blocking my bowels.

Although the surgery relieved my constipation symp­toms, a few months after surgery, my health decreased again and I found myself vomiting after meals. I had to undergo an­other surgery and they found that, yet again, adhesions had blocked my intestines. The doctors were puzzled; they couldn’t understand why adhesions continued to form in my body.

I became pregnant later that year, and gave birth to a second son. Because I had experienced some pain after the birth of my first son, I knew to expect some pain after my second delivery. However, the pain was far more than I had imagined. My uterus was so swollen that it felt like it was going to fall out.

My doctors decided to perform a hysterectomy. During the surgery, they found that my uterus was covered in adhe­sions. They decided to only remove my uterus and leave my ovaries — in hopes of sparing me early menopause. But nine months later, they had to remove my ovaries as well, because they too were being strangled by adhesions.

Over the next four years, adhesions continued to form and I had to undergo two more surgeries for intestinal blockages. I was so famil­iar with the symptoms of intestinal blockage that I could even tell where the blockage was. If the block­age was lower, I had prob­lems with constipation and feeling full all of the time. If the blockage was higher, I would uncontrol­lably vomit after I ate.

After all of these surgeries, my stomach looked like a war zone. Scars stretched across my stomach and I literally had skin hanging down. Because they had to cut through my abdominal muscles so many times, my stomach also seemed to just hang. The damage from the surgery was so extensive that my insurance agreed to cover the cost of surgery to repair the area.

I remained relatively free of symptoms for a number of years after that surgical repair, but then I began experiencing the tell-tale signs of intestinal blockage again. I spent eight to nine months trying to find any other treatment besides surgery. I was desperate to find a natural treatment that wouldn’t cause more adhesions to form. However, nothing seemed to work.

My husband couldn’t understand why I didn’t just have the surgery and kept urging me to have it. On the other hand, I faced perplexed and confused doctors who did not want to touch me because of my extensive history. Furthermore, be­cause adhesions do not show up on tests, they could not see the blockages before surgery. One doctor suggested I had irritable bowel syndrome, even though extensive testing had shown I did not have that condition. One doctor even sur­mised I was addicted to surgery!

I felt like I was being torn apart by the various opinions. My husband wanted me to have the surgery so he could have his wife back, but my doctors were hesitant to pursue another surgery. In the meantime, I continued to experience severe side effects. I had to reduce my eating to extremely small portions. All day long I would feel full and usually vomit in the middle of the night.

I finally underwent surgery and sure enough, I had adhesions blocking my bowels.

As usual, my body remained symptom-free for a few months after surgery. I began seeing a nu­tritionist, and after reviewing my history, she casually mentioned a manual physical therapy clinic, Clear Passage Therapies (CPT), that treats adhesions. I was dumbfounded. After all the time I spent searching for a treat­ment option, she just casually mentioned the clinic like it was no big deal. I knew it was something to consider if my symp­toms returned. Luckily though, I was able to stay on top of my health for a few years.

Then two years after my surgery, I was brutally raped. The physical, emotional, and psychological damage ran my body completely down. One of my doctors before had suggested that stress could cause adhesion formation. Although it has never been proven scientifically, I thought back about my life and realized that some of my adhesions had formed right after extremely stressful times.

Whether it was mere coincidence or a direct cause, about a year later, I started experiencing symptoms that I knew were indicative of adhesion formation. I first experienced spasms in my intestine, and then after a few months, I began vomiting again after meals.

I remembered the therapy my nutritionist had told me about and contacted CPT. I was cautious to get my hopes up and I certainly had my doubts, but I knew I had to try the therapy before another surgery.

I went for one week of intensive therapy. Each day, I was treated for four hours. Halfway through the week, I ate breakfast and I didn’t get sick afterwards. I had lunch later and I didn’t get sick either. I can’t tell you how unusual that was — I virtually always got sick after eating when I had a blockage. I couldn’t believe they had broken down the adhesions that had caused my blockage, but there it was —– I could feel the re­sults in my body!

By the end of treatment, it just felt like everything was the way it should be. Before CPT, the tightness in my abdomen pulled so much that sometimes I felt like I was being pulled over. After therapy, I could stand straight and everything felt looser.

It has been six months since my treatment at CPT and I am still symptom free. I don’t know if adhesions will form again, but if they do, I know I will not have to pursue surgery again. I wish I had known a treatment like this existed long before I had so many surgeries.

Emergency Bowel Surgery in India - Belinda’s Ongoing Story, told by Larry

Although we had been married twenty years, we never had the time to take the honeymoon I had promised my bride two decades earlier. Belinda wanted to visit India and Nepal, countries I had visited in my 20’s courtesy of a photo and book assignment I had done for an art museum.

Nepal was presently inaccessible to Westerners due to a heavy-handed Chinese invasion and resulting instability in the capital city, Kathmandu. Instead, we visited nearby Bhutan (a country dubbed “Shangri-La” due to its mountainous vistas and it’s Emperor’s avowed focus on “Gross National Happiness” over “Gross National Product.”)

After a week in Bhutan, we moved down into India. It had always been Belinda’s dream to see the Taj Mahal, so af­ter a short visit to Delhi, we drove down to Agra, the site of that magnificent edifice. The four hours of traffic surrounded us with every method of transport imaginable: ancient, hand carved  ox-carts, camels, elephants, cows and monkeys wan­dered among the cars, tractor-trailer trucks, and three wheeled vehicles of every description; it was both slow-moving and remarkable. Belinda and I have always enjoyed expanding our minds by immersing ourselves in either nature, or in totally dif­ferent cultures from our own, from time to time. We find the experience both challenging and enriching to our bodies, minds and souls. Along the way, we passed numerous medical clinics.

Unfortunately, that night brought problems. Belinda found herself unable to eat or pass foods — both classic signs of another total bowel obstruction. A physician who came to our hotel room inserted an NG tube into her stomach through her nose, then hooked her up to intravenous feeding, fluids and pain medication. Belinda rolled back and forth trying to get food to pass through. I treated her, but this time things went very differently. During treatment both of my hands were being pulled toward a single point in her intestines that felt hard, and hot; it felt like an infection.

This presented a major problem. While we felt our work might help open a bowel obstruction, our therapy is contrain­dicated in cases of active infection. Since we are treating fascia that includes the interstitial spaces (between muscles and organs), we avoid treating infected areas, lest we create an opportunity for the infection to spread.

Belinda lay there for three days, hoping that the occlu­sion might just be a spasm that would release, allowing food to pass. With each day, she was becoming weaker. Finally, we made the decision to move her to a hospital.

We made the decision to life-flight Belinda to Delhi, where we hoped to find a modern hospital. Agra did not have a facility to handle her complex situation.

On the way to the airport, the ambulance driver was kind enough to divert his route to a promontory across the river from the Taj Mahal so Belinda could fulfill part of her childhood dream to see this lovely edifice – a testa­ment to another husband’s deep love for his wife centuries ago. I began to softly cry thinking of our life journey and the love that has persisted through all of the trials and traumas of our lifetime adventure. With all of the traumas Belinda has under­gone, we both still feel very blessed by the gift of our lives, the therapists, patients, physicians, and scientists we worked with – so many of whom have become friends, or touched our lives deeply, as we have touched theirs.

The flight helped us avoid the elephants, camels, ox-carts, and large potholes in the road between Agra and Delhi. Still, the physician who accompanied us had the pilot maintain a low altitude “so your wife doesn’t explode from the low pressure at high altitudes,” she said. That was when we realized that this particular situation would resolve in India – not at home with our own physicians and modern hospitals.

After the emergency flight to Delhi, we were trans­ported to a disgusting and filthy facility that was reported to have excellent physicians. I moved Belinda to the Apollo Hos­pital, which was much cleaner and more modern. The Boston-trained physician was aware of our work, and was patient as I continued to try to clear the blockage. Still, we continued to feel a single site with increased temperature. Remembering Belinda’s difficulty with the previous post-surgical infection, it made sense that the culprit was likely a persistent infec­tion from that surgery. In the end, Belinda elected to un­dergo her second bowel resection surgery.

They took Belinda to the operating room at 5:30 in the morning. I was not allowed to join her, but at 8:30, an orderly came in to fetch me. He spoke only Hindi, even though Eng­lish is the common language that unites India, but he was very animated, gesturing for me to follow him. His only explanation (and apparently his only English) was “come sir.”

The trip downstairs was other-worldly and sometimes nightmarish. As we arrived at the ground floor, we kept follow­ing two arrow signs, always going in the same direction. One read “Surgery;” the other read “Morgue.”

As we finally reached a very long corridor, they were wheeling a dead body from the area, covered by a sheet. Part of me wanted to lift the sheet to see if it was Belinda; another part of me didn’t want to know…

Like being in an “Alice in Wonderland” dream, we passed a small wing of the hospital whose entrance sign read: “Test Tube Baby Unit.” I am sure they have good doctors there, but the wording of the sign and the feelings it evoked in me seemed strange to my western mind.

At last, we arrived at the end of the hall where we faced the (now familiar) two signs, now giving very different direc­tions. The “Surgery” sign pointed to the left and the “Morgue” sign to the right.

My guide picked this moment to stop, breathe, and catch his breath from our long trek. It was the longest moment of my life…

At last, he stepped to the right, turned and put out his hand indicating that I should go left, into the surgical suite. I began to breathe again.

He had me scrub in, put on a surgical cap, gown, and booties, and enter the main surgery room. The room was wide open, about 30 feet square with eight people being operated on simultaneously. Looking around at this scene in awe, I saw someone gesturing to me from the third table on the right. It was Belinda’s surgeon.

Slowly I approached the table. There was my love, to­tally anesthetized on her back, with a mound of bright red in­testines piled up on her rib cage. The doctor started moving her bowels around with his hands to show me what he found. “See,” he said, “No adhesions. You did your job well. But this, here is the culprit.”

He lifted a section of the intestines for me to see. There, like a wedding band or the gold label on a cigar, a tight infected band encircled her intestines in a vice-like grasp, decreasing the 1½ inch diameter of her intestines to a tightly banded closure about a half-inch in diameter. The yellow-green color of the band indicated a state of severe infection.

“Good we operated now,” the surgeon told me. “Other­wise this would have burst, causing infection to spread through­out the abdomen and pelvis.” He proceeded to cut out the infected area and rejoin the cut sections.

As it happened, Belinda’s physician was an excellent surgeon.  She healed without infection this time, despite the proximity of seven other open surgeries of various types that surrounded us.

When Belinda and I met with the surgeon after­wards, he offered some words of wisdom. “There is nothing you could have done to treat the infection, but you really did a remarkable job clearing adhesions in Belinda’s abdomen and pelvis. The fact that you could clear all of the adhesions that must have been there considering her history, leads me to be­lieve that you can delay or prevent surgery in people with par­tial bowel obstructions. I encourage you to explore that area; you may be able to relieve much suffering and hardship.”

After spending a couple of weeks recovering in the hos­pital, and having totally missed most of our delayed honeymoon, Belinda and I asked permission to move to a different hospital. “We’d like to be near a historic site, or a beach,” we said. “Do you have a sister hospital to which we could move for our final days in India before our flight home?”

“Oh yes,” the Administrator said. “We have an affiliate hospital on the Southeast coast, in Chennai. I could move you there Monday.” It was Friday night, Christmas eve. Christmas was coming Saturday, and there was no flight Sunday so we ar­ranged for the first flight out to Chennai, on Monday morning.

Sunday (the day before our flight), the Tsunami hit India, making its greatest landfall at Chennai. I would have been on the beach when it hit at 9:30 that morning, since I always rise early and go to the beach when we are near one. Belinda would have become a very low priority patient among the survivors of the 53,000 people who died there, that day.

Blessed as we were to avoid that massive tragedy, a catastrophy of global proportions, we moved on to the city of our departure, Mumbai. After having Belinda in the hospital for over three weeks, I splurged and got us a room at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai. This hotel was a magnificent edifice — one that was recently attacked and burned as a target of terrorists using automatic weapons and hand grenades. Over 200 people died in the Mumbai attacks, which targeted western tourists.

I guess you just have to live your life each day knowing that “this is it.” The moments that we spend in life are all that we have, each of us. Each of us needs to make the best of the time we have here on earth. Life is not a dress re­hearsal

 

Top | home | Contact Us | site map | Policies | Questionnaire

Fertility Treatment Center | Female Infertility | Endometriosis Pain | Blocked Tubes | Infertility Treatment | Cause Of Female Infertility | Pelvic Adhesions | Endometriosis Severe Pain | Fertility Treatment | Painful Intercourse | Abdominal Adhesions | California Fertility Clinic | Intrauterine Adhesions | Florida Fertility Clinic | Cost Of Fertility Treatment | Bowel Adhesions | Adhesion Endometriosis | Natural Fertility Treatment | Natural Way to Increase Fertility | Midwest Fertility Clinic

Language: العربية Deutsch Español suomi Français Italiano 日本語 Nederlands Português Русский Svenska Filipino 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) email: info@clearpassage.com direct phone: 352.336.1433 ph, 352.336.9980 fax 1.866.BABYHERE (866.222.9437) - toll free, US & Canada MA11614  MM11022 Date of last modification: May 4, 2009

We comply with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information: verify here.