JOHN COLUCCI

John’s illness began in June of 1993. It started with Irritable Bowel Syndrome and quickly progressed to Ulcerative Colitis. He started on numerous medications that finally led to massive amount of steroids. Around Christmas of that same year things were escalating out of control so we sought more medical advice. We asked our doctor to send us to the best gastroenterologist he knew. This led us to the University of Chicago Hospitals.

We met Dr. Ira Hanan right before Christmas and he started John on some different drugs in large amounts. He worked aggressively for one month and then put John in the hospital on intravenous steroids for one week. A colonoscopy was performed and it was determined that John's colon was beyond saving. Nine months after this all started we decided that the J-Pouch surgery was our answer. Surgery was scheduled for February of 1994.

After the J-Pouch came a long string of surgeries and hospital stays that just never seemed to stop. John continued his suffering and incontinence problems and could never find peace with the J Pouch. Nights were endless with no sleep due to burning and the necessity of going to the bathroom. He had a continual burning sensation in his rectal area that would not allow him any rest. He would try sitz baths but that only gave him a temporary reprieve. He experienced blockages and lengthy hospital stays because the doctors did not want to operate so they tried many different remedies. None worked however, and he always required surgery. They kept going in and cutting his sphincter muscle because he was always tight and that created more pain. He continued to lose weight. At the beginning of this ordeal he weighed 185 pounds he was now down to 137 pounds and had decided that life just wasn’t worth living. We live with my parents so we started a suicide watch and never left him alone.

John was anemic, mal-nourished and just plain miserable. We were searching for an answer to his pain but nothing happened. The doctors at the University of Chicago Hospitals said the only answer was for him to go to an external appliance. John refused, he was not open to that idea at all. We began looking into different areas for answers. We thought it might be his eating habits. Although one day he could eat something and have no discomfort whatsoever the next day he could eat the same thing and just about go out of his mind with pain and burning. I was in the process of checking with a nutritionist about his food when she told me that it wasn’t his eating at all. She said that his body was rejecting the J-Pouch. I asked her to please explain and she told me that she had the J-Pouch ten years prior and went through the same agony. She finally found a surgery called the Barnett Continent Intestinal Reservoir (BCIR) and it gave her life back.

We then started making telephone calls to inquire about this procedure to find out if John was a candidate for it. We started with Susan Kay, she sent us information that we showed to our doctors. They were unhappy that we checked into this and would not support us. They felt that a surgery that was advertised in magazines was too risky. We asked them to please let us proceed into this with their blessings. They did finally begrudgingly sent John’s paperwork to Dr. Pollack for him to check over and then call us.

Dr. Pollack called us and after asking some questions said that John was in fact a candidate for the BCIR. We then had our insurance company check into it because we could not afford to pay for this out of our own pocket. Once the insurance company gave us the go ahead we talked with Fran who is Dr. Pollack’s assistant and set a date for John to have the surgery done.

We flew to Florida on a Friday morning and saw Dr. Pollack that same afternoon. We then admitted John on Sunday morning and he had the surgery on Monday, July 28 1997. Prior to surgery he also had to have a blood transfusion because he was so anemic they said he wouldn’t make it through surgery. After a nine-hour surgical procedure John was in recovery and Dr. Pollack came and talked with me. He said that he wondered how John had stayed sane at all. His rectal area was like “raw hamburger meat”. Dr. Pollack said he has never seen anything like it. John began his recovery process and in about 32 days we flew back home. Finally, three years after being diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis we were hopeful.

He continued to get well and strong again by gaining weight and eating anything he wanted. As a matter of fact in the first 6 months post-op he gained weight so quickly that it caused the valve on the pouch to slip. He also developed pouchitis and because it was the first time this had happened we were a little afraid so we went back to Florida. Dr. Pollack put him in the hospital on suction and IV so that his pouch could rest. After the pouchitis was healed, he still had the slipped valve to consider. We decided to wait on another surgery until the valve became a real problem for John.

Three years had passed and we decided that it was time to fix the valve problem because John was leaking constantly. We talked with Fran at Dr. Pollack’s office and set a date for the surgery on September 11 of 2000. He was in the hospital about 21 days and came through his recovery period beautifully. We got back home on October 8^th of 2000 and John went back to work on light duty three days later. He is happy, healthy and able to do anything he wants. The BCIR was a life saving procedure for John and we feel that if it was not for this surgery, he would not be alive today. We are so Thankful to Dr. Barnett for giving Dr. Pollack the wisdom and compassion to help all of these people who suffer from a disease that is so horrible. We just want everyone to know about the BCIR so that they too can find life again.