It Took Two and a Half Months to Cure My Father's Stubborn Constipation

Not long after this year's Spring Festival, my father was tormented by stubborn constipation. The most urgent thing every morning when he got up was his inability to have a bowel movement.

His stubborn constipation first appeared five years ago. At first he would just misuse various laxatives on his own, such as the Chinese rhubarb (Dahuang) and other herbs, to solve the problem. My father had no idea that certain components in rhubarb can cause habitual constipation; he only knew that using rhubarb to solve constipation felt wonderfully quick. So whenever he was constipated he used rhubarb, or took lactulose prescribed by local doctors and some Chinese patent medicines with purgative effects.

Middle-aged and elderly people often become constipated because of a disturbance of the beneficial gut flora, reduced exercise, and weakened intestinal peristalsis. Almost all laxatives have the side effect of causing habitual constipation, but my father understood very little about this. And outpatient doctors mostly don't think that much for their patients; they simply prescribe laxatives, solving the problem by this simple method. As for how many hidden dangers this brings to the patient, that is not within most doctors' consideration.

After treatment, my father's constipation grew worse and worse; last spring it was also very severe. Last year I brought him to my side and treated him as irritable bowel syndrome. After taking trimebutine maleate tablets for about a month, he got better. For more than half a year afterward he was not constipated again, but during the Spring Festival period my father simply did not follow my medical advice and was very careless about his diet, eating too many pickled foods and spicy, deep-fried foods.

After this year's Spring Festival the severe constipation returned. My father refused to come to me to be cared for, so he sought medical care in his hometown and saw many doctors, all of whom used laxatives. At first it could relieve the bowels, but later it could no longer do so. Until around April or May I kept urging my father to come to me for my care, but he was still unwilling to leave his hometown. In June, his constipation became so severe that he began to prepare his own affairs for the end, and only then, urged by my older brother and me, did he come to me to receive my care.

I stopped all his laxatives, gave him large amounts of probiotics and prebiotics, and firmly opposed his taking any more laxatives, whether Chinese medicine or Western medicine. My father was very frightened by this, because he felt that if he could no longer have a bowel movement he would soon die. Because he could not pass stool, his body felt hot and restless, his emotions were irritable, his mood was depressed, and he was often in an irritable state.

I bought an enema kit, planning to give him an enema to relieve his bowel movement when he truly could not; I intended to use coffee or dilute salt water for the enema. However, this enema kit was never used even once, because after I used probiotics and prebiotics, forcibly changed his eating habits, and took him out to exercise every day, he could basically have a bowel movement every day, though the stool was very hard.

My father himself read medical books here and often felt he had this ailment or that ailment, asking me to treat him according to the approaches he had read about; I refused them all. His constipation improved day by day, and I did not want his impatience to push him back onto the old path of relying on laxatives to solve the bowel problem.

After a month, my father became somewhat angry; he may have felt I was fooling him and could not quickly solve his problem. I still took him running, supervised him to eat more of various vegetables and fruits with laxative effects, and supplemented probiotics.

My father doubted that my medical skill could solve his problem, feeling that my refusal to use medicine was not treating his disease, so he was arranging his affairs for the end in pessimism. I wanted to dispel the fantasies in his heart about Chinese and Western medicine, so I took him to expert outpatient clinics at Grade-A tertiary hospitals such as the 301 Hospital and the Air Force General Hospital.

An expert in gastroenterology told him that constipation in the elderly is a very common problem and that they have no way other than prescribing laxatives; with that he wrote out a prescription. My father had basically used all the medicines on the prescription already; we told the expert that these medicines had been tried and were now resistant. The expert spread both hands and indicated he was helpless.

We then registered with an intestinal specialist. After the visit, my father's condition only improved for less than a week, and afterward it became even worse; moreover, after taking the medicine it rebounded more violently. The intestinal specialist also said there was no way and told us to seek someone more skilled. My father began to say to my wife: it seems these doctors' level is not as good as mine.

He finally accepted my advice at ease, patiently taking a combination of various prebiotics and probiotics, while persisting in replacing the qigong he used to love with jogging. To help him solve the constipation step by step, every day I supervised his exercise and diet, changed his living habits, and did not allow him to eat scalding-hot food—equivalent to changing the eating and living habits of his whole life, which made him thoroughly uncomfortable.

After persisting for two months, the situation improved greatly. We began to try reducing the dosage of the probiotics and prebiotics he was taking, following the principle of "withdrawing gradually," step by step getting off the oral solid prebiotics and probiotics, replacing them with liquid probiotics such as Yakult bought in the supermarket or yogurt rich in probiotics.

Recently, his problem was finally completely resolved.

Treating his constipation was not easy. Close as father and son are, even he did not trust me when he was in pain. He had to see those top famous experts first, and discover that the medicines and suggestions others could give him were all ones I had already used and mentioned to him—and that I used even more methods—before he would set his mind at ease.

Because of this I especially understand why many patients, after seeing me, still want to go ask those experts to take a look. Understanding human nature from its depths: everyone values their own life greatly. Even my own father had the right not to believe me, let alone other people?

And the difficulty of treating human disease is far beyond what patients themselves imagine. Over these years I have met too many patients and their families who are extremely impatient, hoping the doctor can cure the illness with one dose. No matter how hard to treat their disease is, as long as the doctor cannot cure them quickly as the patient wishes, the doctor loses the patient's trust and even angers the patient. So very often, when a patient with stubborn constipation like my father goes to see those top experts, the doctors adopt a giving-up attitude, spread their hands, and concede that they are helpless.

Patients are indeed hard to care for. As a professional myself, I also found it quite strenuous while caring for my father, because patients are mostly highly emotional, and this often leads to treatment failure. When treatment requires changing a patient's habits built over many years, many patients simply cannot do it. I adopted the principle of "staring to death and locking on tight," watching over my father every single day, urging him to change his habits according to my methods, and taking time to accompany him in exercise. Only in this way did I help him build new habits and kick the old bad ones. How many people, I ask, could actually do that?

This was merely one case of stubborn constipation, yet it took tremendous effort to make treatment work. How much harder then are the cancers I treat!