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Health

This post has an image of a naked stoma surrounded by output. I wouldn’t be doing my role as an advocate any good if I didn’t talk about leaks that stay contained. These happen to many ostomates and affect me probably the same as an “explosion” leak. Leaks either way they happen can be incredibly upsetting to the person experiencing it. The leaks that explode out from underneath the baseplate are ones you have to think fast before you need to wash more than just your clothes. The contained leaks are the slow burners as to speak. These ones are the ones that do the most damage to your skin. The ones that start with a sharp itch, but sometimes its...

Naked stoma in this post. Last week I spoke about some of the struggles I had been having with regards to my ileostomy and I try to talk about the good and the bad. Sometimes I hate my stoma. Actually scratch that I hate the things that make life with a stoma more difficult. Like hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) and eczema. – with the hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome my stoma has started to fall in on its self; which is easier to deal with than a prolapse or at least I think so. But it allows leaks to happen as there is now a gap between my skin and the bag.– the eczema often ends up in me scratching my bag off....

Recently I have faced quite a few struggles with my ileostomy and they have taken quite the toll on my mental health; this comes after having my ostomy for over 4 years and having little to no issues prior to this. Some of the struggles I have been experiencing are: leaks – I do suffer with leaks but these have been happening far more often than usual sore peristomal skin itching increase in retraction swelling blockages soreness stoma cramping – this is probably my bowel kinking or becoming caught on adhesions and my goodness it is some of the most debilitating pain I have ever been in! To an extent I have experienced all of these before but not to this...

You may, or may not, have seen the recent news last week regarding a male Inflammatory Bowel Disease patient, aged 34, at Barnsley hospital being given the right to die because he didn’t want to live with a permanent stoma bag. Before I go any further with this blog post, I am going to say that I am in no way making this about me and taking anything away from the man’s struggles & the struggles of his loved ones having to see him get to this dark place in his life. I am merely expressing my opinion & in no way is my opinion fact. It is what I feel and I believe we should all have the right...

You may, or may have never, heard of this term. You may have also heard it being spoken about along with protruding or retracting stomas. A flush stoma is a stoma that sits level with the abdominal skin level. My experience with a flush stoma I have had issues with this, which was caused by a narrowing just before skin level, just inside my abdominal cavity a few centimeters behind my stoma. The narrowing was causing my stoma to be pulled back down to the skin level. A few things can cause a flush stoma such as surgical technique, a narrowing behind the stoma as I have just mentioned, weight gain/loss and it can also simply just occur over time...

Bowel kinking is a thing and I have been in the past hospitalised for it; for me personally it is the worst pain I have had since having my ileostomy formed 4 years ago. Don’t get me wrong I have had some nasty blockages especially the partials which come and go over a few days and I have had a particularly nasty stomach bug which also landed me in hospital! So for me to say these kinks are bad for me they are hella bad! I have no idea what kick starts them off as there have been different situations the one that lasted a week we have absolutely no idea and I had x-rays and a CT scan! It came in...

Tuesday 19th May is World IBD Day. With this coming up, I thought it would be a great opportunity to talk about Comfizz and the impact they have made on my stoma journey. How I got my stoma At age 7 I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease. Crohn’s Disease can be anywhere from your mouth to your bum, but a lot of people typically have it in the small intestine. This was where it was diagnosed with me. Being scared as a young child of having scopes (endoscopy/colonoscopy & I still am now, I can just push myself through it), I didn’t undergo tests to keep an eye on things as frequently as you maybe would with an adult with bowel...

So today I want to talk about the Coronavirus which is obviously causing mass hysteria and worry. As people with compromised immune systems we obviously do have a right to worry but is most of the information shared on social media just hype and bad case scenarios rather than being fully informative? I have spent a few days reading different articles and after some posts on Facebook I have seen that just seemed like pure scaremongering I felt that this post needed to be done. I want to highlight that although I work within the healthcare sector I am not a nurse or a doctor so I will cite sources as required. I would also like to state that any...

Starting the year as I mean to go on but what exactly do I mean by that? Well it is obviously around my stoma but it is divided into three parts! They are: my ostomy supplies my diet my fitness They look like the beginnings of resolutions but I’m not thinking of them as such, so how do I plan on doing this? Firstly the stoma supplies – as we all know the NHS isn’t in exactly the best position to keep providing us with ostomy supplies on a free prescription we need to keep on top of what we have and how much we are ordering. Now this can be a bit of an awkward one as we try...

Firstly I would like to apologise to all my lovely readers for being a day late but the sickness bug had hit the Simpson household! Firstly with Ra-Ra being sick, then my bag kept filling up – I managed to be safe from vomiting as I took some anti sickness after laying on the kitchen floor dry heaving at 5:30 in the morning. 00Steve then was sick and got migraines and the only person who seemed free of the bug was Button although he was sick a few days before. I have done a post before on what it is like being “normal” person sick when chronically sick. But now onto the partial blockages as I suffered that the night leading...