My Journey With Crohn's Disease - Part 5
Me and my bag
It’s now been 6 weeks since my operation, and 2 weeks since my last blog. Things are still progressing relatively well, with just a few small bumps in the road. I am continuing to slowly increase my exercise, with more walking throughout the week and doing more in my exercise sessions. I had an appointment with my surgeon on Monday 27th July, which was quite short but sweet. He’s happy with how my wound is healing and how I’m progressing and I now need to wait for an appointment with my gastroenterologist to assess where I go from here.
I mentioned that there have been some small bumps in the road over the past couple of weeks. The main issue I’ve been having is leakages from my bag. The leakages occur around the seal, where the bag attaches to my skin. The worse of these happened last night. My bag can tend to balloon up if I’m particularly gassy, and last night i woke at around 01:30 to find the bag very full with air and faeces. As I tried to move to sit up and go to the toilet, I heard a fairly loud “farting noise” and a pop. The air had escaped through the seal and i was covered in the contents of the bag. Once again, my wife Char came to my assistance and I had to shower and we sorted out a new bag. It’s times like this that honestly do bring me down. Char had only just fallen asleep so i felt really bad that I’d woken her up (or the noise from my bag did) and for the rest of the night my mind was worried about it happening again. My bag splitting is genuinely my biggest fear with this whole process. What’s going to happen if it leaks while I’m out, or working or anything like that? It would be incredibly embarrassing. During the day I am tending to empty more often than needed to try and avoid this happening as it only seems to occur if the bag is heavy or full of air. This is something I just need to work on and stay as positive as possible.
My weight is very slowly going up and I have been prescribed Ensure shakes to assist with this. I have to drink 2 of these a day between meals. I’m eating as much as my body will allow without causing uncomfortable pain.
Having a stoma and a bag certainly isn’t an easy way out of any issues people may have regarding their digestive system with conditions like Crohn’s etc, and it brings with it, it’s own issues and difficulties but all in all things are going well and I’m hoping this trend continues.
31/7/20
