can i take these medications together?

Call your doctor’s office tomorrow to see if they think this normal at 2 weeks post surgery. Sometimes this can be a sign of a possible problem described below. I would let your doctor know & see if you can use over-the-counter meds or if you need a prescription. Here’s the info on possible problems post gallbladder removal:

Often after gallbladder surgery, temporary diarrhea is common but, usually improves within a few weeks of the operation. Some individuals, however, are troubled by persistent diarrhea after their gallbladder is removed. The symptoms may vary, but most patients complain that they often experience urgency and watery diarrhea shortly after eating.

Bile Salts are often the culprit.Bile is a thick yellow fluid made by the liver. It helps you digest the fat in your diet. Between meals, liver bile is stored in the gallbladder, a little sac beneath the liver. When you eat, the gallbladder squeezes and releases the stored bile salts into the small intestine to help with digestion. After food is digested and absorbed, the bile salts are reabsorbed at the end of the small intestine and recycled to be used over and over again. When the gallbladder is surgically removed, the liver must make more bile salts, and more are released between meals because there is no place to store them. The increased amount of bile salts can sometimes overwhelm the small intestines’ capacity to reabsorb them. The excess spills over into the large intestine, or colon, where bile acts somewhat like a laxative, leading to diarrhea.

There is no way to prevent this. Why some patients develop this side effect after gallbladder surgery and others do not is still a mystery. Unfortunately, there is no way to predict before surgery who will develop this problem afterwards. Having this side effect does not reflect on the skill of the surgeon or how the surgery was done. It is really just bad luck. Fortunately, the vast majority of patients do not develop bile salt diarrhea after gallbladder surgery. The exact risk is not well studied but estimated to be about 5% of patients.

There is no cure for this problem, but treatment is available. Once it has been established that bile salt diarrhea is the problem, treatment is usually prescribed to lessen the symptoms of diarrhea and urgency. The mainstay of treatment is a powder called cholestyramine resin (Pronunciation: kole ESS tir a meen). It comes as a powder that is mixed with about 6 ounces of water. Several formulations are available such as Locholest, Locholest Light, Prevalite, Questran, Questran Light. It also comes in a tablet form called Colestid. Much like a chemical "sponge," this medicine lowers blood cholesterol by trapping and inactivating bile salts in the intestine, preventing their reabsorption. By trapping bile salts, cholestyramine also helps patients with bile salt diarrhea. The dose required to treat this condition varies, but most individuals only require one dose a day usually right before lunch.

Most patients with this problem find that one daily dose of cholestyramine works quite well. Some seem to do better on a low-fat diet. Others find that they are helped by the use non-prescription medications to lessen diarrhea such as Imodium. Imodium can be safely taken several times a day.

While some individuals do get better over time, most patients who have bile salt diarrhea that persists longer than 3 months after gallbladder surgery have it for life. It can usually be controlled with treatment. However, as soon at the cholestyramine is stopped, the diarrhea quickly returns. The whole goal of treatment is to prevent attacks of diarrhea and make their life normal again.

Hope this helps & you are feeling better soon. Good luck!