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So this week has been Crohns and Colitis awareness week (inflammatory bowel disease aka IBD) and our diseases can vary wildly from person to person but some things affect us all. This week over on Instagram I did a post a week with a little snapshot how having ulcerative colitis affected me which I will share in this post. December 1st – Today marks the start of Crohns and Colitis awareness week! I had to have a rough guess at my medication tally but its definitely around 8! I was diagnosed 2 years after symptoms started. There is the possibility of more surgery but I’m still not sure how I feel about that yet. December 2nd – I don’t have many photos left...

Is this your first Christmas with an ostomy of any kind? Maybe you are a dab hand at this now or maybe you panic about running out of supplies over the festive period? Hopefully with this little guide on what I do when it comes to preparing to order my ostomy supplies delivery it might be a little less stressful! First of all please check out this post of when the last guaranteed delivery for Christmas is for the main companies here. Even though they are all open until around Christmas Eve some of them like to have a cut off date just to ensure you get those much needed supplies in time! So what else do I do before getting ready...

Hi Comfizz readers! Over the next few weeks, I will be writing about several elements surrounding the invisible disability of mental health. In these posts, I will be discussing various mental health matters & sharing my own mental health experiences, as well as including some useful mental health contacts & some tips I find help me. This week is the NHS’ #SelfCareWeek which ties in nicely with me starting this mini blog series. I will be including a self-care post closer to Christmas which I am super looking forward to writing. Mental health is something I have a lot of experience with & is also something I am very passionate about. So, what is mental health? Having a look around...

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...

So I thought I would do something a little different this week and I have written a few poems on life with an ostomy which you can find here, here and here. Often writing a particular theme can give you writers block especially on poems; this was certainly no different even though I used the acrostic style. Do you remember writing poems in this style as a child in primary schools often around harvest or Christmas?   O – opportunities to be experienced S – support from others T – travelling can become easier O – optimism for the future M – medical marvels Y – years to look forward too   L – less trips to the loo! I – independence regained F – fitness can be achieved once more E – events...

A year or so ago I decided to raise awareness for ostomies (for World IBD Day) by sticking ostomy bags to statues around where I live which you can read about here. The same year I believe I stuck a bag on my carved pumpkin which made for a good talking point for people when they came to our house; this is something easy we could all do and create awareness whilst having a bit of fun. I am going to do that again this year too with some of the bag samples that I didn’t get on with. I also aim to “osto bomb” some of our local places of interest with some decorated bags with ghosts and maybe even a pumpkin...

Having stoma surgery is definitely a big deal, whether for a temporary stoma or a permanent one. There is a lot of information out there that we all get bombarded with pre-surgery especially, leaving a lot of us feeling very overwhelmed and wondering where to start first when it comes to learning all about the stoma world! However, some people feel before surgery especially that they were not provided with enough support/information to prepare them for life with a stoma. Some people also have their surgery as an emergency, so may not have ever heard of a stoma before or actually had that time to prepare! It’s safe to say that you can read up all you like about having...

Many people think once you have an ostomy of any type that you can’t do much afterwards for the risk of hernias. Whilst to an extent that is true the extent being once you have an ostomy you are at risk of a hernia as long as you wear the correct type of support wear (see any of the Comfizz range!) for what you are wanting to do you can do anything even things people would deem as extreme just as these ostomates will show you! For me my extreme since having an ileostomy is going for hikes and hikes where I live consist of miles of moorland and hills! One hill we all call a mountain as it is definitely looks more...

Back in May Comfizz launched their competition to be in with a chance of being selected as a Comfizz Style Ambassador. Having relied on their ostomy support wear since after my surgery, I knew straight away that I just had to enter! To enter the competition, Comfizz wanted you to send in your images of Comfizz “in style”. You could send in as many as you wanted (which I felt helped bring out my creative side more!) so long as you made sure the photos were tasteful, focused & interesting. I sent in a selection of photos showing off different Comfizz garments and enjoyed composing them such as in the photo above. The one I really enjoyed putting together was a “before...

World Ostomy Day is technically every 4 years but I don’t think a single ostomate acknowledges that since we are proud of our ostomies and the life it allows us to have again after being so poorly before them. We should be acknowledged every year just like cancers are and even food days! I just wanted to share a bit about my back story and how I came to get my ileostomy.   I have had my ileostomy for 3.5 years and it seriously is one of the best choices I have ever made because my life has never been better! I have quality of life back, very little pain and of course my beautiful baby Button. I had to fight...