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

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...
1 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 sl...
1 comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more