J-pouch Life

Since I got home from the hospital, my stoma has been somewhat retracted. I have a loop ileostomy now, so I have two pieces of my intestine forming my stoma instead of one. The working part retracted quite a bit, but went to the point of near disappearance a couple of days ago. Because the [...]

It’s been exactly a month since the divorce. To clarify: Divorcing from my colon. My colon doesn’t phone, it doesn’t even write letters to me. I guess it’s over. The break-up was pretty bad I suppose, considering they had to sedate me for all the pain. So here we are a month later and I [...]

So part 2 of my 3-part surgery was scheduled for March 4th, 2009.  As before, we headed out to Ohio two days before the surgery to stay at my aunt’s. On March 3rd, we went into the hospital for the pre-surgery appointments, which included a check-up, EKG, bloodwork, nursing check-in, and a talk with the [...]

I was diagnosed with UC at the age of 19 after my freshman year of college. Things started progressing very rapidly and I did not respond to medications very well. I tried numerous medication including Remicade infusions and prolonged use of prednisone. After getting very sick one weekend I was admitted to the hospital on [...]

My Story begins in February of 2000, 3 days before my Husband and I were to leave on a 7-day Mexican Cruise celebrating our first year of Marriage. We attended a Birthday Party that night at a local Mexican restaurant and I had to leave the table over and over again with terrible diarrhea, just [...]

During the second of three surgeries (I had a three-step surgery, instead of a two-step surgery) a complication occurred where my small bowel was perforated. Here’s what I can remember of the occurrence. Everything was fine, I even asked the surgeon to sew up my incision instead of having staples (this is usually a choice, [...]

before it all began Hi everyone. My name is Casey, I’m 21 and live in Florida. I took a lot of pictures through the last year of my surgeries and decided to share in hopes of helping someone going through the same situation. Feel free to ask questions or just leave comments! my email is [...]

Mark’s Step 1 surgery was a laproscopic total proctocolectomy with ileoanal reservoir reconstruction (a jpouch) with a temporary loop ileostomy until the jpouch heals (‘takedown’ is 2nd surgery).   Step 1 was done in early July 2007 and he was in the hospital for 5 days .  Thankfully, he experienced no complications from this major surgery.   [...]