Dear Gillian,

I would like to ask if you can do TV around people who have had an abdominal operation and suffer from sluggish bowel as a result.

I had a hysterectomy with both front and back repair in September 2007. Apart from being told straining is VERY BAD if I want the op to stay successful, being warned the bowel can take a long time to work efficiently again and being sent away with a small bottle of lactulose, advice for getting back to normal was non existent.

After 3 months of being very careful and continuously taking lactulose I started to try weaning myself off the medicine, but ended up going back to work still dependent on it.

By July of 2008 I was in the doctors being prescribed antidepressants, counselling and tramoxedine to help me sleep. 29th September 2008 found me totally unable to work, crying in front of my doctor and on the sick for an indeterminate length of time.

Then I found a copy of your book “You are what you eat” and bought it to help me understand food. I had about 75% of the signs in the diagnosis list�. So I began my journey with your help. (I thank you and your team so much.) After 7 or 8 days the constant pains, which I’d previously written down just to see what was happening, were almost forgotten.

Since then I have moved from 5 days between bowel movements, or diarrhoea if I increase the medicinal laxative, to almost one bowel action a day.

My tongue has lost its horizontal cracks and the central crack and teeth marks have lessened though it is still swollen and white covered. I still have other symptoms to deal with but frankly I don’t care too much as I am making progress at last.

BUT my biggest hope is to find some way of other people seeing your work as important after abdominal operations. I thought about writing to my local hospital and I pass your website URL to anyone who cares to listen, but that isn’t wide enough to reach thousands of people like me who are harassing their doctors to no avail.

Yours sincerely

Teresa