I am to have a bowl resection surgery, mid March. My doc was more concerned with the 30mg prednisone I take than the CellCept. He said the prednisone will slow down healing and that they would propaply need to do a temporary colostomy while my bowl heals. Curious what your doc's thinking is.
Mary.

I had gyn surgery while on Imuran in Jan 2013, oral surgery in Aug 2013, and a liver biopsy in January 2014. I see no reason for these drugs to preclude surgery. My cancer diagnosis required me to discontinue a imuran, however.

Like Elinora I have had oral and abdominal surgeries (bowel resection), even had a good part of my upper jaw replaced while on Imuran which is similar to Cellcept. They do recommend that immune suppressants are stopped while undergoing a surgical procedure and for the recovery so that the immune system can have the best chance at staving off an infection. With cancer though they want the immune system as active as possible to help deal with the cancerous cells.

Joe

Quite wonderful and timely responses, all of you. Thank You.
We are living in a world of 'specialists', where my urologist doesn't know how to deal with ppl on immunosupressants apparently. My neurologist doesn't know how to deal with patients with prostate cancer, and my primary can't deal with either of these issues.
This is why your information is so important to me. Thanks again.

I have heard so many different things from doctors, it's hard to know what to think. I have had major, invasive surgery, and my surgeon
wanted me on as low a dose of prednisone as possible( I got down to 15 every other day.) This is because ( he said) it slows the healing. My healing was fine. He had no problem with me being on cellcept. My oncologist said sometimes they treat malignant thymoma with prednisone and have had good results. It lowers your immune system , but I guess it also slows the cancer. Two oncologists I spoke with said to continue with the cellcept. One said I should avoid it. So, because it has improved the quality of my life and I'm unsure,I do take cellcept. Very confusing.

Judith

Judith, they give me steroids during my chemo infusion. It is confusing.

I have been off cellcept since mid-sept due to infection in intestines and followed by two surgeries. ( one to remove part of large and small intestine and give me an ileostomy, the other to reverse the ileostomy). I had been on it for 13 months.

i also had to get off prednisone,did a quick wean from 15mg to 0 in 4 weeks guided by my neurologist. My docs all agreeed I needed to be off meds so my immune system would be at it's best for me to heal quickly and without complications.....mission accomplished!!!

I see my neuro in next week or two. My arms and legs are def weaker but overall I am survivng ok. fortunately I am off work and can sit around house alot.

the reason my infection got so bad,docs say is because the meds masked the symptoms....fever and pain(prednisone prob kept the swelling down). I didn't feel pain until I developed holes in intestines.

also I didn't start to notice increased weakness until I was off the cellcept for about 3 weeks.

I did have a colonoscopy while on both meds and no infection or holes were seen even tho this test was done 6wks after and 3 wks before major painful flareups of the infection which required 9days in hosp each time. Maybe your doc is concerned something might be missed due to meds.

hope this helps and good luck with your procedure!!