World IBD Day 2015.....raising awareness

This was my #ccuk story that I shared in 2014 for World IBD day. I shared it with my immediate colleagues at work as part of a cake sale that I held in our work room. This year, with whole buildings going purple and, alongside a colleague we upped the awareness raising stakes. We organised a college wide bake sale and invited staff and students to #gopurple!

As part of the promotion of our bake sale I sent an email out to all staff in the building with a link to some earlier blog posts. I hoped staff would read these and understand why World IBD Day is so important and why we need to raise awareness of both Crohn's and Colitis!

I know people followed the links and read the posts....I can monitor the traffic on my blog and it was great, if not slightly terrifying to know that potentially everyone I work in the same building as knew that I have a Stoma and an ostomy bag!

But that is how we are going to raise awareness , not by hiding but by putting ourselves and our stories out there! My ostomy does not stop me from doing my job, in fact I can work because I have it... I certainly wouldn't be able to have the attendance record that I do without my Stoma!

I just want to thank all my friends, family and colleagues for their support.... Several of them wore purple, lots of them bought cake and the £100 we raised will  help CCUK to continue their research and support! Another little step to raise awareness... Thank you!






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Toilets, trees and other things!

Image
I am becoming an expert on toilets ... Especially their ability to flush! Since having my Stoma I am still slightly self-conscious. I do worry that people might notice the bag under my clothes, especially if it's a bit full, and I worry that if the loo doesn't flush properly stuff will be left in the loo or around it. I tend to give loos a rating now. The best ones get a one flush rating! Generally these are home loos, or good public loos were there is a full flush option AND you can hold the flush down. Most public toilets are a two flush rating! And then there's Novotel rating! We stay in Novotels quite often and for some reason their loos just do not flush well! I can often alter the rating of a loo by preparing the it before I empty .. The simple trick of lining the bowl with some paper before emptying can promote a loo to a one flush rating. The best flush I have come across was on a really old (like over 100 yr old) loo at a little station (Weybourne i think) on t
Read more

World IBD Day 2017

Tomorrow is World IBD Day... it is the 5th that I have celebrated. Tomorrow I will be wearing purple in honour of the day. Prior to 2012 I had no idea about World IBD Day indeed I didn't know what an IBD was and I certain didn't know what an ostomy was! In honour of my 5th World IBD Day here are 5 thoughts to share... 1) Having an IBD IS HORRIBLE. It is debilitating, life changing, life limiting and exhausting. At my worst I had very little life. I couldn't go out with my family, I couldn't do things with my daughter or my husband. 2) Going to the toilet up to 30 or 40 times a day IS NOT normal! It is not the same as having a dodgy curry! It is exhausting. And time consuming! 3) The medical profession can be both brilliant ... they saved my life...but also awful at diagnosing IBD. It is much easier to diagnose IBS than IBD. Being told for years that I had IBS probably nearly killed me. 4) There is no cure for IBD... research is finding answers slowly, but it is
Read more