More than just a bag lady

I used to love swimming and even went back to doing lengths in the local leisure centre after having a stoma. I found the repetitive motion very soothing and it’s one of the very few activities where I could totally zone out and let my mind be still. So when I got my first Hickman line 7 years ago I was gutted when I was told by the doctors that swimming was an absolute no-no.  Over the years I’ve read on various Facebook TPN groups and blogs of people swimming with Hickman lines and they’ve usually done it one of three ways: 1) they’ve ignored the doctors advise and just gone swimming regardless  2) they’ve bought a specially adapted drysuit from  Hammonds . These keep you and your line dry but do cost upwards of £400 3) they’ve used stoma bags to cover the line and keep it dry I really  missed swimming and asked my consultant at St Marks at almost clinic appointment if he was sure I couldn’t swim. And every time his answer was the same: no swimming. Because I’...

Tonight Hubby and I were in the audience of Question Time!  I was watching the programme a couple of weeks ago and saw that it was coming to Nottingham and decided to apply. I’ve always wanted to go on the show but the last time it was in Nottingham I was in hospital so being well enough to go tonight was especially poignant.  The online application form was pretty straightforward and didn’t take long to complete. There were a number of questions you had to answer about your political allegiances- who you voted for in the last election, which party you would vote for if there were a general election tomorrow, how you voted in the EU referendum and whether you belonged to a political party or have even done things like leaflet dropped or gone door to door for one. The reason they wanted to know all that is to make sure they get a balanced audience that is representative of the country we live in.  On Monday I was out at the shops and just as I was paying for something at t...

I got a phone call  from the hospital on Monday asking if I could attend an outpatient appointment with Mr E, the colorectal surgeon on Wednesday at 9am. Of course I said yes even though Wednesdays are usually spent in bed recovering from Tuesday nights yoga.  Since getting the phone call I had been wondering if this meant that they were starting surgeries again and that’s why I’d been called to the outpatient clinic. Would I get there and be given a surgery date or would I just be fobbed off with ‘NHS backlogs’? My mind had been going a million miles an hour thinking of all the different outcomes and trying to predict what would be said at the appointment.  I got to the hospital this morning and went through all the Covid related questions they now ask you as standard. I was Mr E’s first patient of the day so luckily there wasn’t a long wait to be seen. I was called in and the first thing he commented on was my pink hair. We then talked about my admission in Cornwall and...

Tonight I went and got my Flu jab at my GP surgery. I was in and out in 2 minutes and I barely felt a thing. Hopefully that will protect me from getting flu this winter and having had Covid fingers crossed I won’t get it again.  I am a little bit confused about the whole 3rd Covid jab/boosters that are being offered at the moment. I saw this post on the Facebook page of Crohns and Colitis UK. I wasn’t sure what the difference was between the two so I thought I would ask the nurse while I was getting my flu jab. She seemed to think that the third dose and the booster were exactly the same but the above picture implies that they’re different. She told me that they’re currently offering Pfizer boosters at my GP surgery which I wouldn’t be able to have anyway due to my allergies. After doing a little googling I found this information which helped to clarify what the difference is on the  Crohns and Colitis webpage So I’m thinking that because I was on steroids and an immunosuppres...

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...

Day -4: Today Big Girl was out of isolation following her positive Covid test and I was able to leave my parents house and move back home. I was so excited to hug the kids and to be back at home with all my family.  Day -3: Big Fella tells us that 4 of his friends have tested positive for Covid and that he had been sat next to one of them in all his lessons yesterday. He’s convinced he’s got Covid (despite the lateral flow test coming back negative) and refuses to go to school. He’s too big for me to pick up and bundle into the car so he has the day off. Day -2: We test Big Fella again before school and the lateral flow test comes back negative again. He says he doesn’t feel great but Hubby and I think he’s just trying to get another day off school and we tell him he’s going. Well he went but he only lasted an hour before he was ringing us and saying he felt really poorly and needed to come home. Hubby went to pick him up and he went straight to bed when he got home so he must have...