Skip to main content

World Ostomy Day




Today, Saturday 2nd October, is World Ostomy Day. For those that don’t know what an Ostomy is it’s a surgically created opening in your abdomen to allow poo or urine to leave the body.



Ileostomies and Colostomies are also commonly known as stomas and are for poo. Ileostomies come from the small bowel and colostomies from the large. People tend to end up with these as a result of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), cancer or if another surgery goes wrong and damages the bowel. Urostomies are for wee and are made if the bladder is too damaged to work properly or has to be removed. 

I had an Ileostomy for the best part of 5 years following the emergency surgery I had in 2009 to remove my large bowel after it perforated. It came as a huge shock to me and took me a while to get my head round the fact that I had a stoma. However I was still able to do all the things I could do before, including swimming. The reason I no longer have an ileostomy is because I was ‘joined back up’ in a 2 part surgery in 2013/14 where a j-pouch was made out of my small bowel. I opted to have the surgery as I was having problems with my stoma- it would block up and I would end up in A&E on a regular basis.  I blogged about the J-pouch surgery at the time so feel free to go back through the posts to find out more if you’re interested.  

When I (finally) have the surgery I need now there’s a high probability that I could end up with an ileostomy again. Obviously life is easier if you’re able to go to the toilet ‘normally’ but if having a stoma again gives me back some quality of life then it’s a small price to pay. 




 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Light at the end of tunnel

I’m sat writing this blog post in St Marks, the specialist bowel hospital in London. So much has happened in the last few weeks; it’s all been a bit of a whirlwind. But I finally feel like there is some hope at the end of the tunnel. Let me tell you why.  At the beginning of June I was admitted yet again to QMC in Nottingham with huge amounts of pain, my bowels not working properly and just feeling generally unwell. I had only been home a couple of weeks since the admission in May but I had been feeling so rubbish most of my time had been spent in bed. I had tried everything I could to stay at home but the pain had become so bad I was barely able to stand or take a few steps on my own.  I had expected to maybe be in for a week or two to get stronger pain meds and get back on my feet but I ended up being in for almost a month. They put me on morphine injections and ketamine but then stopped them when my heart rate dropped to 30 beats per minute and my breathing to 7 breaths a minute. Th
Post a Comment
Read more

The light at the end of the tunnel is a train

Last week was a busy and pretty crappy week for me health wise. I had to go and have blood tests done with the nutrition nurses and I had two hospital appointments; one with the gallbladder surgeon in Nottingham and the other with colorectal surgeon at St Marks. I was hoping to have at least one surgery date to write in the diary following these appointments but I came home empty handed on both occasions. Here’s what happened.  I began noticing over the last few weeks that I’ve started feeling really crappy. I’m feel lucky to have been at home for the last 6 months and I have been the most well I have been for years but it felt like things had shifted slightly recently but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. But years of being sick means I know my body and I can tell when something isn’t right. I have been feeling permanently exhausted and having way more bad days than good. I’ve gone back to spending 2, 3 or more consecutive days in bed, unable to do anything but watch tv and sleep.
Post a Comment
Read more

The wrong size line

I’m on the M1 heading back to Nottingham after a road trip to St Marks to get my line repaired. But this is me, and as usual it wasn’t a smooth ride. More like a bloody shit show. So what happened? Let me tell you… After being admitted to QMC in Nottingham on Sunday with a broken Hickman line I was taken down to Interventional Radiology on Monday afternoon to get my line repaired. Firstly, I couldn’t believe it was happening so quickly and secondly I didn’t want to get too excited because, well it’s me, and usually things don’t go according to plan. And sadly I right to rein in the excitement.  When the doctor came to consent me for the procedure it was for a replacement, not a repair. I assumed he had made a mistake so I told him I was there to get my line repaired and was definitely not there for a new one. He looked at me and said “I hate to be the bearer of bad news…” and that’s a sentence that never bodes well. He then went on to say that they didn’t have any repair kits and that
1 comment
Read more