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Lifestyle

On the 1st of October I went in for my lignocade infusion to help with multiple conditions I have that cause me chronic and total body pain. When I had originally got the appointment the hospital I would be receiving treatment; at had no covid patients and I was relieved. Then the week of the appointment the hospital had a t least 25 patients and the anxiety really started to set in. I have friends that work on wards in the sister hospital letting me know they were covid free if I could swap to that one. In reality I wouldn’t have been able to get Ra-Ra to school and Button to nursery then drive 20 miles to the hospital...

It’s important to remember that Crohn’s Disease affects everyone in different ways and different severities. Some medication that doesn’t help one person may really benefit the other and vice versa. There is no “one size fits all” approach for treating Crohn’s and unfortunately no way of predicting which treatments may be successful or not.

One of your biggest questions before diagnosis may well be "what tests are done for Crohn's Disease?" It is important to understand, no matter how frustrating it may be, that some questions may take a considerable time to have answers to & some questions may not always have clear answers.

It is important to remember first & foremost with any health worry to get it checked out. If you have something abnormal, the best thing to do is to seek medical advice. You know your own body better than most. Some symptoms of Crohn’s Disease can also be symptoms of other things, from Ulcerative Colitis to intestinal blockages unrelated to chronic inflammation, so it is important to get the right medical diagnosis. Not everyone’s Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) diagnosis is straight forward or quick, so generally the earlier you get something looked into the better. The tests and examinations to determine what it is and how to treat it can vary from different doctors & specialists, but there are some...

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....

Hello readers & welcome to my first post in my ‘Chatting Crohn’s with Comfizz’ mini series. Over the next few months, I will be talking to you about a different aspect of Crohn’s Disease, starting today with the basics. What is Crohn’s Disease?   Not my image. From Google search. Crohn’s Disease (often referred to as Crohn’s) is a form of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). The other main form of IBD, which you may have heard of is Ulcerative Colitis. Unlike Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn’s Disease can affect any part of the digestive system from the mouth to the anus and causes inflammation, but most commonly affects the small intestine and sometimes the large (colon). Ulcerative Colitis affects the large bowel....

Yes gardening is exercise if you are thinking “hmmmm why is it in the exercise category”! However I don’t blame you for questioning whether or not it deserves to be in this section; but during lockdown I certainly learnt it is hard work! 00Steve and I embarked on the back garden project where we entirely redesigned one corner of our garden. So we went from a lawn that slowly sloped up to holly trees to having two ponds, a rockery, a sunken trampoline, decking, two living walls and a raised bed herb garden! I started off by “supervising”, providing refreshments, keeping him company to actually getting stuck in!     We tried to share the workload, well as best as we could...

Male mental health week starts on Monday and this is something that means a lot to me as I have lost two incredibly good friends and one I was close to in primary school to suicide. I honestly don’t know if talking to professionals would have helped two of them as they both had gone through some pretty awful stuff during their 27 years. If nothing else Josh and Ste definitely lived rock star style lives and they say rock stars die at 27.  I know many blokes that live their lives bottling their thoughts and feelings up for the fear of “not being man enough” through toxic masculinity. Men are humans and they have feelings too; we should all...

Gas and ballooning can be a right pain in your out of order bum! But what things can help reduce it or make it more manageable? For me it is one of the biggest things I have to contend with in my day to day ostomy life but I don’t always help myself and I will explain why in a little bit.  Here is a short list of things that you can eat and drink that may produce more gas than others – now this is all relative and some foods don’t affect everyone in the same way it is just to maybe give you a light bulb moment. Heck there are still things that make me go DUH! Like...

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...