Skip to main content

All night long

It's been a long night. 

My bag has leaked 3 times meaning numerous changes of pjs, Glastonbury showers (see my leaking bag and shower rant post for a full explanation) and a general lack of sleep. With all the extra laundry I have to do I should get my washing powder on prescription!

Where the output/poo gets onto your skin it makes it sore. This is because it's very acidic and actually causes it to burn. So all around my stoma is now red raw, inflamed and I'm in agony. Time to fish out the liquid morphine me thinks. 

Not sure why the bags are leaking so much. I haven't really over-indulged the last few days or eaten anything that I shouldn't have...apart from a few quality street and celebrations. 

Chocolate is not allowed on a low residue diet. Not sure why, I think it has something to do with bowel motility (how fast/slow things pass through the bowel).

So whether those few chocolates have caused this (and I do mean a few, like 6 or 7, not what some of my friends would call a few i.e. half a tub!) but I think that today I'm going to fast and give my stoma a break. 

I did a 48 hour fast a few weeks ago when my stoma was going crazy bonkers and it's the bowel equivalent of pressing control-alt-delete on your computer. It kind of resets it and let's it go back to normal; my normal that is. 

I'm not going to be quite so drastic as my last fast as that was no food or drinks at all. I will just point out that this was done under medical supervision and by the recommendation of my dietician. It is safe for me to do as I receive 2.5 litres of fluid every night in my TPN so I don't dehydrate even if I don't drink anything. 

So today I might not eat anything and limit what I drink to give my bowels a rest, minimise what's passing through my stoma and what can therefore leak onto my very sore skin. 

Think I will also give the stoma nurse a call on Monday to let her know and ask her advice although I already use pretty much every extra product available so not sure what else she will be able to recommend. 

I will try to get an afternoon nap in today too, especially as to top off all my night time activity I have had to sleep in Big girls single bed tonight with a small mountain of cuddly toys at the bottom meaning that I have had to lie in a very curled up foetal position due to the snoring of my husband and the possibility that if I stayed in bed with him I might actually kill him!
(The kids are having a sleepover in Big fellas room in the new sleeping bags their grandparents bought them for Christmas.)

Fun and games eh?

NB x

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Caravan wankers

Over the last few years when I was stuck in hospital for long periods of time Hubby and I would talk about what we would do if I ever got ‘better’. During some of those times when I was so, so poorly the idea of just being at home for more than a few weeks at a time seemed like a far fetched dream. But I’m currently living that dream! And obviously I know I will never ‘get better’ but for these purposes ‘getting better’ meant being well enough to be at home, not in pain 24/7 and not in bed all day, every day. Not too much to ask now is it??  So in our talks, once I was at home and was well enough to do the real basic things like watch Big Fella play football, Big Girl play netball, go to Tesco, play with the dog, go to the cinema etc one thing kept cropping up. We would love to have a motor home and tour round the country. We talked about the places we would like to visit, how much Buddy the dog would love it and how it would give us a chance to reconnect with each other.  But...

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 sl...

Trying to get vaccinated

When I was an inpatient recently I asked about getting the Covid vaccine because I’m classed as Clinically Extremely Vulnerable (ECV). Apparently other patients on the ward had gotten theirs but I was told that it wouldn’t be possible and that I would have to get in touch with my GP. Apparently staff within the hospital had been using the system to book vaccinations for friends and family by saying that they were an inpatient and as a result they were now only vaccinating staff who could show their ID badge.  I can understand that people are worried about the people that they love but to think that people abused the system in that way makes my blood boil.  So when I was discharged I rang the GP surgery and was told that they had absolutely nothing to do with the vaccination programme and that I would need to get in touch with NHS England. So I called NHS England and spoke to an adviser who told me that according to the system I wasn’t eligible for a vaccination. I explain...