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When our son was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at the age of thirteen, my initial reaction was one of fear, what would this mean for him, how would his life change? Then disbelief, how could this be happening to our previously super healthy, athletic son? Then guilt, was it something I’d done to cause him to develop Crohn's, was it genetic or lifestyle, could I have done something different to protect him from this wretched disease?

The person who is most aware of your ostomy's smell is you.  Also, it is normal to smell your ostomy output and gas when you are changing your ostomy bag. As you would if you went to the toilet the standard way to poo, it's natural for it to have a smell... After all, it is waste from your digestive system!

Unless you have had an operation to form a urostomy (where a stoma is formed to divert urine out of the body via the abdomen), you will pee as normal with an ileostomy & the same goes with a colostomy.  Both surgeries to form an ileostomy or colostomy divert bowel waste from the body, not urine. It is also possible for people to have stomas for both urine (urostomy) and bowel waste (ileostomy or colostomy) at once. 

Today is Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday) & I always count my lucky stars that thanks to my stoma, it is a day I can now enjoy and not dread. In the stoma world, we can also speak of pancaking, which isn't so tempting or enjoyable! To read more about this, you can check out my blog post I wrote in 2020 here.

  What are lectins? Lectins are a type of protein found in many foods, but which are difficult to digest. One of the Lectins most people have heard of is Gluten. They are a kind of built-in defence system for plants to make themselves less appetising to animals that might eat them. Also, their seeds (due to the lectins in them making them indigestible) can pass through the animal or birds digestive tract unaffected, so the animal/bird can become a good means of dispersing the seeds far and wide. Some would term lectins as an “anti-nutrient” due to the attention they have received through popular media citing lectins as the cause of obesity, chronic inflammation, GI problems, leaky gut syndrome,...