IBD, ostomy, life and me!

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 o...

To cut a long story short I had a horrific weekend. The hospital was closed due to noro virus so I couldn't have visitors, I hadn't seen my little girl since I came in and I was being monitored in case my colon ruptured or burst! Monday was d-day....Ian came in to talk to the stoma nurse, but by the time they started talking the consultant and surgeon were already talking about ops and the danger of leaving my colon where it was any longer! It clearly wasn't responding to the steroids. I really had no choice whether to have a colectomy or not.... Indeed I suspect really the decision had been made on the Friday when the stoma nurse drew a cross on my tummy! Monday night was much worse for Ian than me! I was under anaesthetic having chunks of my bowel removed.... He was sitting waiting for me. We'd been told the op would be short.... Not sure who thinks a 6 hour op is short! But there we go... That was it my faulty colon was removed and I was left with a stoma, somethi...

May is IBD awareness month, tomorrow is World IBD day.....which got me thinking about the past 15 months.  Up until February last year I had little idea about IBD and I had no idea what colitis was... I knew loads about ibs, but that was where my knowledge stopped. Soon after my daughter was born my doctor had diagnosed my symptoms as irritable bowel syndrome. I was on fybogel and various pills during flare ups. Fine.... Generally life was ok. I could manage the flare ups most of the time.... but when it got bad I struggled....as did my husband and my little girl. Most mornings I would spend on the toilet, maybe going 8 - 12 times before leaving for work. Sometimes I would have to leave the classroom and hope I made it to the nearest loo in time. If my little girl woke in the night I would have to get her up, take her to the toilet, QUICKLY, then sort her out! One of the worst experiences was our first ever camping holiday. Even though our tent was only 100m from the toilet ...