Eight Weeks With A Stoma

Two months have passed since surgery and I’m feeling great. Everything appears to be falling back into place and I am now returning to doing the things that I enjoyed doing prior to the flare up. And even better, I get to enjoy them without any of the side effects of Crohn’s.

The Ken Butt continues to be the main source of issues at the moment and even though it is very, very slowly healing I have had an infection that needed fixing.

State of the Stoma

I think at this stage the stoma has pretty much healed and any minor bleeding around the periphery of it has minimised. The one downside is that the shape of the abdomen above the stoma hasn’t changed at since surgery so that area does stick out. I was hoping that the shape was a result of swelling and would have reduced in size. 

The Stoma at Week 8

Ken Butt Infection

The new Ken Butt has been taking an age to heal and I’m still visiting a nurse daily for dressing changes and having a district nurse visit the house on the weekend. During a recent visit by a district nurse I had mentioned that I had feeling a little under the weather and had an elevated heart rate (the Apple Watch is surprisingly accurate). She took a swab from one of the wounds that’s being treated and sent it off for analysis. Even though I never felt ill again it transpired that there was an underlying infection that needed treating with antibiotics. 

The infection was most certainly restricting the healing process and even with daily observations by multiple nurses, due to the location of the infection they would never be able to see it. Fortunately I’ve got some experience in knowing when things aren’t quite right so was able to catch it.

Exercise Update

Just before the seventh week surgery I started some gentle runs on the treadmill and they went well with no issues to report. Since then I have progressed to running outdoors on roads and a canal.

At this stage I’m keeping things simple with predominantly flat routes and restricting to to 2 or 3 miles. With my current lack of fitness it’s very easy to enforce that restriction.   

I’m not experiencing any issues in the abdominal area either during the runs or afterwards. I’m still wearing the support belt when running, going on planned long walks or exercising in the gym. It really does help and if I jog a little outside whilst not wearing it, it does felt a little uncomfortable. 

The plan is to continue with short runs and try to build up my fitness levels again with swimming and cardio at the gym. 

Angelcare Nappy Disposal System

I’m still in the learning phase when it comes to figuring out how the things that go in through the mouth get altered when coming out of the New Bum. Sometimes things come out a bit normal, sometimes things come out a bit loose and sometimes things come out a bit stinky. I’m not one to keep a food diary so when things come out in a way that’s less than desirable or the odour is so bad that it seeps through bags and bins it’s hard to pin point but after one particularly bad night (I have a feeling it was related to eating some delicious cheese!) I needed to find an alternative to just a regular bin.

My routine usually involves putting used bags out in the wheelie bin during the daytime and if inbred to change overnight storing it in the bathroom bin and then transferring first thing in the morning. This is fine if the contents of the bags smell ‘normal’, but if they smell particularly stinky then just sitting in the bin for a couple of hours, the smell can start to emanate around the house.

A bit of research revealed a nappy bin from AngelCare that would store a number of bags at a time in odour eliminating bags. This would hopefully eliminate the smell from leaving the bin during the night and would mean that there wouldn’t be a rush to transfer it to the outside bin first thing in the morning.

The bin retails at £19.99 although it can be found cheaper on Amazon and I picked it up from Argos on offer for £10.99.

2 Weeks Since I Last Sat on a Toilet

The 8 week anniversary means that it has now been 2 months since I last sat on a toilet! In a way I do miss having a sit down and doing some thinking. Think I need to start sitting on the throne occasionally to do some reflecting and I’m going to start by doing it today!