• The patient will have an abdominal X-ray
• The patient may be given another drink of sodium phosphate solution.
• Nurses will make sure the patient has nothing else to eat or drink
  for 3 hours before the procedure
• Nurses will prepare an IV (for giving IV medicine throughout the patient's stay)
• It is possible that a nurse may come to see the patient and ask for a blood sample. This is just to make sure the patient is ready to have the cecostomy placed. If any blood test results are abnormal, the procedure may be postponed.

Over the next few hours of your stay, the nurses and doctors will be primarily concerned with preparing the patient to be as comfortable and pain-free as possible before, during, and after the procedure.

• Two hours before the procedure a nurse or doctor will visit, and rub EMLA cream onto the right side of the patient's abdomen (to numb the area where the cecostomy is going to be inserted).
• One hour before the procedure a nurse or doctor will visit to give the patient a rectal dose of acetaminophen (common pain-killer).

To minimize any risk of infection, before the procedure patients are given a combination of antibiotics.

The patient then goes to have the procedure.

After the procedure:

Nurses will visit often to make sure the patient is comfortably recovering. They will begin giving the patient:

• Pain medication (acetaminophen and/or morphine) every 4 hours for 24 hours
• Antibiotics every 6 or 8 hours until the patient is discharged.
• A cecostomy tube flush with 10mL of water twice a day.
• Clear fluids to eat at first, slowly progressing to solid food when appropriate.

Nurses will also be checking the dressing over the insertion site. Unless otherwise indicated, the nurses will leave the dressing on for 24 hours, then will change it once a day until the patient is discharged.

Finally, before the patient goes home, nurses will give you instructions on how to perform bowel irrigations using the cecostomy, and will arrange the appointment for the C-tube change in 6 weeks.

If you have any questions, phone or page the cecostomy nurse or the interventional radiologist on-call.