no fun. Drink the fiber daily.

I thought I had dodged it. Sorry you have such an ailment to live with.

It is no joke. 10 days in UCU, 6 months on ostomy. It took over 2 years to heal to the point of a mostly normal lifestyle. People usually don't think about gut health until they get to the crisis stage. There are many things that can go wrong; diverticulitis is just one. I believe one can put the odds in their favor by taking a little extra time to maintain regularity while their gut is healthy. Psyllium is your friend.

Close to the six month mark with an ostomy, will hopefully get reversed in January. Spent close to a month in the hospital with drains dealing with an infection caused by diverticulitis. It's been a fun ride.

he/she is highly confident in its success. It was a marvel to me that after so many months of inactivity, the pieces could be joined again, and basically just start working again. As I say, it took me 2+ years to feel like I was on a normal pattern, and I still need to plan my calendar and diet around having a good morning, so to speak. But otherwise, this is very manageable.

I had been diagnosed with diverticulosis 15 years earlier. I wish I had been given more advice about ways to keep the gut as healthy as possible, but honestly, I'm not sure the medical world really knew so much at that time.

I very actively managed some combination of stool softener, prunes, and psyllium (nothing stronger) to make sure that things kept moving daily because it takes a long time for the colon to really be "itself" again. I erred on the side of softness, which can be a bit inconvenient, but I wanted to give the gut its best chance to really heal naturally.

You will be good. Don't be afraid of this. And actively manage it. I have not required any extra medicines or medical procedures, other than colonoscopy to make sure everything is as the surgeon expected. I am sure we are both thankful for the state of medicine today that allows us to carry on after this.

My pet (diverticulitis) was diagnosed 15 or years ago, during an gall bladder removal was very serious as gangrene had set in which required a stay in the hospital with some heavy IV antibiotics. This was a very serious infection, thus the diverticulitis was an afterthought at the time. There was no consultation on how to deal with diverticulitis. I did avoid certain foods.

My current medical drama involved two fistulas running from my colon to my bladder that presented as an UTI. The radiologist said wow old man, you must have worked hard on this, but as you mentioned he concurred with your statement that medicine had evolved in the last decade with laparoscopic surgery and treatment for my situation. I'm blessed to have a great surgeon who takes the time to ensure that his patients are very well informed as to the current course of treatment. I said patients as he treats my wife as a patient as she is my caregiver, ensuring that she is as well informed as I may have missed something due to the medications and stress caused by my new pet. My doc also stresses mental health is as concerning to him as my physical health as again as you mentioned this is a long term ordeal.

Thank you for sharing your personal experience, I'm grateful that you shared your your optimism & trusting you will have an awesome new year.

first, let me say I have no medical training, and nothing I say should be relied upon over the advice of a gut specialist who has knowledge of one's individual case.

Diverticulosis is simply the observation that the colon has pockets or bulges (diverticula) that should not be there. The colon is not ruptured or perforated. This is often noticed during routine colonoscopy, and in my experience, doctors tend to dismiss this as being normal. They might make some generic observations, like, "eat more greens", but nothing particularly helpful, at least in my case.

Diverticulitis is the more severe situation where those pockets develop infections, and this can quickly escalate to a life-threatening level. There are other similar conditions such a as Crohn's and colitis that have received more attention from the medical community, but diverticulosis doesn't really have a constituency or funding. For example, just 15-20 years ago, there was a strong belief in the medical mainstream that diverticulosis escalated to diverticulitis when seeds ( tomato, sesame, whatever) got lodged in the diverticula. But this is no longer a mainstream view.

Here is my theory. There may be many things the bring on diverticulosis, including genetic disposition. But I think it is highly possible that people develop diverticulosis if they tend to have hard stools that require a lot of strain to pass the stool. I believe that straining on a regular basis is a likely culprit in the formation of those pockets of weakness. If a person finds they have to strain often, I would take action. Stool softener pills are cheap and gentle. Psyllium products like Metamucil work wonders. People joke about prunes, but they really are helpful. And apples or dried fruit like apricots or mangos. I like ginger chunks for a little snack. And hydrate. These things are all easy to do and there is no downside, IMHO. It may avoid a really serious disease later.

To everyone's good health in 2026 ...

Omg! No potato chips? 😱 even baked ones?

So sorry you are going through this.

I don't think I could trust myself to just lick them!

Thanks

I prefer the low salt kind...

But I can see using them as salt licks, too.

I hope you're feeling much better!

No potato chips! That would put my dear wife in a snack panic. Three different kinds of chips are in the pantry at this time.

but I was surprised I had done so well!

With high blood pressure and heart disease I too must watch my daily salt intake, although since I’m also on two different kinds of water medications and must keep up being hydrated, the balancing act is hard.

The water pills decrease my sodium levels…I have to keep that up without overdoing any salt products, getting sodium through natural means. My cardiologist explained it to me along with simple suggestions.

Since I’m the primary cook in the house it makes it much easier. Should add we eat very little ultra processed food and don’t go out to eat very often.

Couple articles to further confuse the subject…


https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/salt-and-sodium/

https://www.henryford.com/blog/2016/03/salt-vs-sodium-whats-the-difference

I had no idea they were not the same.

I take bp meds, and at least one is a water pill. The e.r. dr. told me last night that low sodium can cause the tired feeling. Learn something new every day

I equate diverticulitis more with flares of acute local pain than UTI.

It stayed general, thought it was my back. When the ice or heat didn't work, I thought it might be a UTI. I've had those, but this is a first.

Thank you

I'm really sorry!

I've had it 4 times. The last 2 times I was hospitalized with severe cases.

It will be alright, Marthe. If your case is mild, you should start feeling better really soon.

I'll be thinking of you today.

Soon! I’ve had 3 attacks in the past. I now no longer eat beef, pork, or lamb. I only eat cheese occasionally.
After stopping beef, etc., I have not had a full blown attack. (Avoid foods that stay in your colon for a long time. Foods that are hard to digest.)
I’ve had “almost” attacks after eating corn and also pistachios. If you even feel a bit of that pain beginning to start, go immediately to a liquid diet and sometimes you can stop it from progressing. My doc says, stomach pain plus fever means I go to the ER. So, when the pain starts, monitor that temperature.
If you want to ask me any questions, feel free to message me.

... no more beef hangovers.

Chicken and fish more often. I used to eat beef often, but over the last few years, avoided it. All the memes and jokes about cheese during the holiday is true around here. Both of my daughters are vegetarians and one is a renal dietitian, so I have plenty of help from them to point me to healthy eating.

You are fortunate to have them!

Take care and Happy and Healthy New Year!

And you can simply avoid that food in the future. I had diverticulitis earlier this year and it was within a couple of weeks after adding ground flax seeds to my post-workout smoothie. Ground flax seeds are like little razors so it seemed a likely suspect.

This past eight months has been better than for years. Pooping blood sucks. Take care. Study up. Old beliefs may not be what is believed today.

Please take care and follow doctors’ orders (which I know you’ll do).

Now you have an excuse not to entertain for New Year’s!

Hope you are back to 100% very soon!

your diet. I buy Equate fiber at Walmart, and sprinkle it on my salads. If I'm not having a salad, I mix a few teaspoons in cold water and drink it down.

Anyways, I hope you are feeling better soon.

That things didn't work out. When I'm over this, I'll look into fiber. I hear ads for some of the products that explain other reasons to use it.

another glass of water before I go to bed every night. Works great to keep me regular and have not had another attack of diverticulitis since my first one in February 2001.

That would suck.

Do what you need to do.

Good luck.

which is the little pouches that form on the colon. They can get inflamed and cause diverticulitis. They thought my abdominal pain was diverticulitis, but the bland diet didn't help, and to me, where I felt the pain was not consistent with diverticulitis.

One of the CT scans showed fibroids in my uterus, and that is where I hurt. I finally got a doctor to LISTEN TO ME, and he sent me to a gynecologist. In the meantime, I ended up in ER again where they ran tons of tests and did all sorts of examinations. As it turned out, I needed a hysterectomy ASAP. And I am now doing chemo.

So, I'm just saying be careful and stick up for yourself if you ever feel the diagnosis is off. They aren't infallible. As it is, my correct diagnosis was delayed by a few weeks, but if I hadn't been insistent that I still didn't feel well and thought it was not diverticulitis, it could have been a lot worse.

I don't say this because I think you've been misdiagnosed. Your story just sparked this reaction from me, so I shared my cautionary tale.

And BTW, from the research I did, the main reason potato chips are forbidden during a diverticulitis flare-up is because they are rough with sharp edges. The little pieces we usually swallow can easily get lodged in the diverticula (pouches) and cause inflammation. If we chewed them to mush, we could probably get away with eating a few chips, but who wants to do that? Yuck. So they tell us not to eat them. Anything you eat during diverticulitis must either be smooth to begin with, or chewed until it's smooth. Maybe others here will have additional or different advice, but that's what I was told.

I am sorry you have this, and wish you a speedy recovery!

... I prefer women doctors. Only took me 60 years to figure that out.

In this case, however, it was a young male doctor who, surprisingly, listened to me. (He was not a young white male, though.) I now have a great team of women doctors and nurses caring for me, though!

... not grab a prescription pad right off the bat. I've found that younger male doctors are getting better, and that immigrant doctors are very good.

My two Muslim women doctors, and woman surgeon saved my life on my first cancer. When my white male brigadier general urologist kept going to the same bag of tricks that he finally realized wasn't working, he passed me on (because i felt he didn't want me to ruin his record by dying) to a Chinese doctor (who the general ran off VA later), he got me to an Indian surgeon who was at a civilian hospital who fixed it PDQ. Six years cancer free.

Thank you so much for sharing. I'm glad you are still cancer-free!

... there was a bonus: my bladder was removed and it required taking my prostate, too. A necropsy showed it was becoming cancerous, too.

If the law of threes holds true, I'm golden.

The chemo I am doing is preventative in nature. They did not find any evidence that my cancer had spread at the time of my surgery, but it could have, so they offered me a wait-and-see approach, or do the chemo. I don't do well with the anxiety of wait-and-see, so I opted to be aggressive and do the chemo. There may or may not be any cancer cells, but if there are, this should kill them. I hope.

... and it was determined that my cancer was not going to respond to chemo or radiation, and Dr Wang said. "i can do this surgery but I only do three or four of these a month, I recommend you use Dr Patel at Scott & White in Temple, he does 20 or so each month. There were three levels of surgery ans I opted for the more radical because it seemed to me that this stuff was aggressive and resistant. It worked well. Fighting it for almost three years was wearing me down, I needed to get it nailed down.

Don't give up. Like Reagan said about something else - trust but verify. Stay on top of it. I think paying attention to it without letting it define you is the key. I think it feeds on worry.

"Don't give up. Like Reagan said about something else - trust but verify. Stay on top of it. I think paying attention to it without letting it define you is the key. I think it feeds on worry."

I needed to hear that tonight.

Everyone who treated me yesterday was a woman, except 1 orderly and the squad team. They were very attentive.

... Shut them down gently, but shut them down. This will be a team effort and non team members shouldn't be allowed to exert undue interference.

Like GWB, you are the deciderer!

Sometimes I wonder how many more parts I can live without I rarely eat potato chips. They were the only salty crunchy food I could think of

Sorry you've had such an awful journey.

I hope you heal from diverticulitis quickly and easily!

I knew I had fibroids and thought my pain was from
That. Went to my OBGYN and she said it wasn’t that. But she did say, “pain on your lower left usually involves the colon”. A day or so later after ending up in the ER, a CT scan confirmed diverticulitis. Funny, that the pain of both is similar!!!
Over the next 2 years, before figuring out my diet, I had attacks in both the descending colon and the transverse colon. I have definitely increased my fiber intake! That pain and the ER visits are not fun.
There is a book called Diverticulitis pain free foods that has some good recipes for phasing in a fiber rich diet after being on a liquid diet. And, you are soooo correct. Chewing is key!!! (I am a former kindergarten teacher. So, I used to eat meals extremely fast. I had to learn to slow down and help my digestive system.)

my pain was all the way across my lower abdomen, from hip to hip, and more on the right than the left. That, and the fact that the diet didn't help, are what made me decide it wasn't diverticulitis.

You have five more days until your memes and pics are due on Sunday. Build up your strength. We're all counting on you, Marthe!

No pressure. None at all!



Take care.

That pleasant task is at the top of my list!

One of my BILs has had that and it seems that it never seemed to completely go away but would flare up.

Wishing you a speedy recovery!!

Sending healing vibes and hope you feel better very soon.

about my concerns...did you know that pepto bysmal makes your poop black? Recommended more fiber and lots of water! Hello daily meta mucil.

I have to take 1000mg of salt everyday.

It's the season for the Punies to be going around.

My Patient First visit revealed that Va. Beach is over-run with flu cases. So any other thing you go in for will put you in direct contact with a flu heavy environment. I've had my flu shot, but not the COVID booster.

No potato chips for you!

I remember a coworker of mine stopped by a doc in the box after work, complaining of not feeling well and a mild stomach ache.....after some tests the doc handed him a piece of paper and said, don't panic - I need you to take this to an ER and they will admit you immediately - turned out to be diverticulitis, serious stuff.....oh and by the way, I just had a couple of weeks of soft diet following a sinus lift and the ONLY thing I missed was POTATO CHIPS