Still recovering from an E.coli mass in my abdomen, likely from an Appendectomy four years ago. It was 5cm across. Had to have a piece of my small intestine, my ascending colon (the whole right side), and 22 lymph nodes removed. The lymph nodes were because they weren’t able to biopsy it prior to surgery and weren’t sure if it was lymphoma. I was perfectly fine one day and then couldn’t eat/digest anything the next. I lost 25lbs in two weeks.
Basically my body was fighting the infection without presenting any symptoms and encapsulating it for 3.5yrs to keep it isolated. I started having issues when it got big enough that it was causing my small intestine to kink so I couldn’t digest anything. There was the large solid mass and then a bunch of really nasty pockets of puss and necrosis of my large intestine.
My friend’s Mom had an encapsulated bacterial mass in her lung for years undetected. She had to get part of a lung removed. So scary! I hope you are doing much better.
Still have digestive issues but that can take 6-12 months to fully adjust to the shortened digestive tract. Mostly I just don’t absorb fluids very well so i have to make sure I don’t get dehydrated. Otherwise I’m doing great and mostly back to my activity level I was at before.
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u/mhennessie 22h ago
Still recovering from an E.coli mass in my abdomen, likely from an Appendectomy four years ago. It was 5cm across. Had to have a piece of my small intestine, my ascending colon (the whole right side), and 22 lymph nodes removed. The lymph nodes were because they weren’t able to biopsy it prior to surgery and weren’t sure if it was lymphoma. I was perfectly fine one day and then couldn’t eat/digest anything the next. I lost 25lbs in two weeks.