Infection 5 months after takedown - anyone have any experiences to share?

[reallife]

I know everything ends eventually, but this seemingly never ends.

Temporary colostomy last August after emergency surgery for diverticulitis with rupture.
Successful reversal last December.
In March, started to develop hernias - also a lovely diastasis recti, which makes me look pregnant (I'm male lol).

I was scheduled for another surgery in mid-May for the hernias and diastatis - but it was put on hold because of an abnormally high pre-op WBC, even though I felt fine and had no obvious infections.

Normal antibiotics didn't help. CT scan didn't show anything. This week, I had an indium scan (they attach radioactive material to the white blood cells, with a subsequent scan to look for where the WBCs head to fight infection).

Lo and behold, it turns out the infection is at the site where the bowel was rejoined

Has anyone else ever experienced anything like this? The surgeon is going to consult with infectious disease next week for suggestions on other antibiotics, but that's as far as our discussion has gone (the results just came back today and the surgeon called me with the results in the middle of his four-day Memorial Day vacation, after the radiologist called him). And I'm still not having pain or showing noticeable physical signs of internal infection.

I'm not finding a lot online about this type of issue. It seems as though antibiotics/drainage might a possibility if it's just an abscess, although I'm (of course) visualizing the worst, up to and including a new stoma.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this? Any thoughts or experiences would be appreciated, since I'll be going on nothing but speculation until at least next Tuesday or Wednesday.

[Kmoty]

I'm not sure how equivalent this is, but 2 mos. After colon resection for stage 3 adenocarcinoma, one tumor with clean margins, 3 positive lymph nodes, I had a colovaginal fistula form at a point of anastamosis of my sigmoid. We'll never know if the abcess associated with that was due to a diverticulum at that point or an imperfect staple closure at the back of the join. Intraoperative testing showed no leaks. The fistula required a second surgery to create a single loop colostomy, which I hope will be reversed. I had no symptoms of infection (fever, elevated WBC, pain, swelling). I had mild inappropriate bowel drainage. The abcess was drained/treated during the colostomy surgery and I had no antibiotics.

I'm very sympathetic, sorry you have to deal with this eccentric development, which may not be so unusual. i believe if we had a good (at least national) database of ostomy and related surgeries we would know the true rate of various complications and other outcomes correlated with disease, comorbidities, age, gender, surgical procedure, experience of surgeon, etc. I hope this is just a bump in the road for you.

[reallife]

Thanks for the response, and I'm terribly sorry to hear about what you've had to go through; thankfully, my saga doesn't compare in severity (at least at this point).

I think in our experiences may be opposite in some ways, since you had no signs whatsoever of infection while my WBC count, metas and other relevant markers were quite high. OTOH, we each had issues that were/are "hiding" - and I'm fearing that mine may also have to be dealt with surgically, since broad spectrum antibiotics did nothing and there's apparently no way they can locate the abscess via scan in the OR, in order to drain it with a normal small incision. My bigger fear, of course, is that the infection was caused by a break in the repaired colon and I'll have to go through the repair+colostomy/reversal processes all over again.

I appreciate your contribution and comments, and couldn't agree more about a national database that could shed more light on the true nature of outcomes and complications.

Best of luck with the reversal, and I hope this is the last bump in the road (albeit a big one) you on this trip.

[Cheryl22]

Sorry to hear everyone’s issue also, but we can def compare to leaks in bowels. It’s been 9 months after my husbands reversal at which point remainder of colon (1ft) was totally removed. He has leak after leak in incision, abscesses with drains and then exploratory surgery to repair leaks on Easter Sunday. Been 4 months now and three incisional openings and still more tears in intestines. They are planning on doing another exploratory very soon. Will know date after this Tuesday after dr visit.