Hi Howard. It would be worth having it checked up. There are many reasons for a change in bowel habit, but one of these possible reasons is colorectal cancer. It does correlate with a lower left abdominal pain as well. However, do not worry immediately as there are other less serious conditions that could also be responsible. Rather speak to your doctor, go for the necessary investigations and only then will you know for sure.

Hi there,
my daughter is 4 years old now and she has constipation problem when she was 1.5,i use to gave her brown sugar with orange juice and she loves to eat all kinds of fruits bt still it wont help!
When her constipation started she was on formula milk and we changed lots of milk and add fruits to her diet and started using brown bread and it helped for some time but she is very sensitive now if i wont gave her any fruit for 2 or 3 days she has her constipation back! nutelle,cheese,cold milk,choc all makes her constipated bt previously she was able to do poop once daily if she has a well maintained balanced diet although she ate all these foods bt little bit bt now she do poop once in two days and more sensitive to these foods…last year she had stomach aches for 1 week nd then we went on vacation and on the very first day she starts vomitting and we have to rush to the emergency nd they said its viral nd gave some kind of injection nd she was ok then..after that she had stomach pain after some months gap nd usually in the centre of belly just around naval button nd doc said its coz of worms nd gives vermox bt now for the past 1 month she has the same pain which is now worst nd she is on moxal nd yesterday she accidently passed urine nd wid dat she passed poop also on the floor(she never did that before)…bcoz of constipation nd stomach aches m so worried now plz tell me what should i do?her stomach pain usualy started after she ate something PLZ HELP SHE IS MY ONLY CHILD ND M SO WORRIED ABOUT HER!

Hi Janet. It would be irresponsible of us to comment on your surgery and you should be following up with the surgeon or proctologist who was involved in your case at the time. If this pain started up well after the surgery then it may be possible that it has nothing to do with the procedure itself. Your rectum could be inflamed and this may be the source of the pain as the pressure during a bowel movement pushes the stool against it. The reason for the inflammation needs to be investigated. Your doctor will advise you accordingly.

Hi Jacob. A portion of your colon lies as high up in the abdomen to actually slip under your ribs when you are lying down. So your doctor is not wrong, the colon can be that high up. The abdominal organs can change position slightly when standing compared to lying flat but it’s not a significant downward shift. The approach to fecal impaction, as it is with any condition, is in a step by step manner. If the first step does not work then the next step in the therapeutic protocol is implemented. So don’t write off the treatment you were prescribed. It may very well be effective so manually crushing the stool is not necessary. Just start with the treatment and see your doctor if you are not experiencing any success.