J-pouch Life

It’s been two years since my takedown and, as a society, we still don’t have flying cars or cloned dinosaurs. That I know of. I mean, I check the news daily to see if any of these scientific breakthroughs have become reality, but no. Nothing. Come 2034, I better have robot legs with jet thrusters. [...]

Hey, guys.  Long time no blog.  So, here’s the scoop-I’ve been doing a lot better since my visit with pouch guru Dr. Bo Shen back in November.  He diagnosed me with efferent limb syndrome which means that the connection to my j-pouch goes at a diagonal instead of vertical making it really hard to poop!  [...]

Well, I finally made the pilgrimage back to Cleveland Clinic (CC) to see the famed “King of Pouches”, Dr. Bo Shen. As one involved in the J-pouch/IBD community, I had, of course, heard of Dr. Shen before. He’s sort of the last desperate act for a lot of people who come from all over the [...]

Today is one of the days I hate my body.  It is just not working with me!  The good news is, we got to Dallas safely and without too much hassle.  Thanks to a two-week dose of the dreaded Prednisone, I had energy and the roid-rage needed to move 2,000 miles.  I was also allowed [...]

Omg you guys, I’m dying. Ok I’m not dying its a tad dramatic but I’m not recovery very gracefully. First of all, you should go read about my disaster of a surgery #2. Long story short….I didn’t get it, what I did get was the 6-8 weeks of recovery. Awesome. Also what i have gotten [...]

Hi all! So for those of you who have followed my story for the past few months you know there have been many ups and downs.  New theories emerged, the one most perplexing and possibly exciting one being that perhaps I didn’t actually have Crohn’s disease-maybe just a horrible case of pouchitis due to poor [...]

Hey Readers! We have a long comment from Cynthia C. and she has a handful of really great questions for the jpouch community. Would you take a few minutes to read her post and see her questions at the end. Thanks so much! Megan & Mark # Cynthia C. Cynthia C. says: February 23rd, 2010 [...]

My name is Sara Randall, I’ll be 25 years old next month, and I have been living with an illeostomy bag since September 9, 2009. Obviously my story doesn’t start there. When I was in high school I was energetic, super athletic, always on the go, and to self conscious for my own good. When i first started [...]

Hi I’m Jackie. I’m a 25 year old woman child from my native of Michigan. I have a bit of an interesting UC story so bear with me while I get my intro out of the way. I was officially diagnosed with UC in May of 2009, but had symptoms for easily 10 years. In [...]