Closure.

Truth be told, I have started to write this several times. And each time I have got nowhere. Primarily because I know where I wanted to go with it, but I wasn’t sure how to best do it. Now I know exactly what I need to say, but more importantly I know why as well. So let me start by letting you know that this is the last I have to say about the whole experience, and this will probably be more to the point and direct, and very honest. Once you are done with this, just remember I am still the person you have always known, regardless of whether our interaction has been on social media, or in person (you lucky devil). If you like what ends up being written, share this blog everywhere. After all, someone may need to relate.

And this was hard. Very hard.

The familiarity was there once again, the room, the beeps, and the nurses around me. This time however, I had another bag attached to me. On the right hand side. Brilliant. A Dr was soon with me telling me what had happened. The reversal of the colostomy had gone wrong, exploded and poisoned me.  My body was very ill and beaten up. Because the repair had gone pop, and damaged my intestinal area, they had needed to open up my bowel again, and bring it out on the right hand side of my body, forming an ileostomy on the outside of my stomach. The ileostomy would be at the end of the stomach, meaning that there wasn’t a great deal of distance between the end of my stomach and the opening of the bowel.

I was sent from the recovery room to Specialist Surgical Care. I would have nurses available at any time, they were just for me and they had no other patients. I had Drs available to me at pretty much anytime, and I was the most critical patient they had in. The end of my bed was 10 foot away from the nurse’s station. I was tired and it was late now, so I went to sleep with no trouble whatsoever.

When I woke in the morning I felt horrible, I felt really beat up and weak. Even though I was high as a kite on drugs, I could still feel the effects of another surgery. It was a groggy feeling all over my body, like absolutely everything was bothering me. Noises bothered me, the lights were hurting my eyes, and the beeping of machines was driving me crazy. The feel of the sheets grated on my skin and just felt uncomfortable. I tried to move the sheets off me but it hurt and I hadn’t the strength to do it. I moaned through the mask that was over my face, and that’s when a nurse lifted it off my face for me. She told me to relax and she gave me a sip of water. I told her I wanted the sheets off me a little bit, and she did it for me. I felt drunk and uneasy. I knew what had happened but was also confused and trying to piece things together. I think anxiety got the better of me at first, but I got over that. I did a little check over me of what was going on. I had the ileostomy bag on my right hand side. There was a tube coming out of me above the bag, about the width of a 5p coin. Another tube of the same size was under the bag. There was a huge gauze dressing from my chest down to my waist. There were 2 tubes coming out of the left hand side of my body, the same size as the others. I had sticky pads on my chest, on the left hand side of my ribcage, the top of my shoulders and ankles. They led to an ECG machine, monitoring my heart. I had the catheter again, and I had a tube in my nose going into my stomach. My legs felt heavy, and wet. I couldn’t move them at all, and I had this feeling of pressure going up and down them. This was horrible; it felt like they were being squashed. I asked about my legs, and the nurse told me that I had these things on them that wrapped around my legs, and vibrated and pulsed. This was because I was at risk of blood clots and aneurysms, so the pressure I felt was this device forcing blood around my legs. I was also at risk of clots in my heart and on the brain, so I was on medication for this as well. She told me if I feel any pain from my chest or ribcage at all to shout up and press the alarm. Any pressure on my head or feelings of being faint meant I had to shout or press the alarm. Anything that didn’t feel right I had to press the alarm.

She put the patient call buttons next to my hand, as my hand already had the thing in I press to self-administer pain relief. I remember this from last time. This is where I clocked the cannulas. My right hand had one just below the knuckles, on the underside of my wrist was another. Another was in the elbow crease. My left hand and arm was the same. To the left of my bed, just behind my head stood a series of drips that had 4/5 bags of clear fluid in them. From these bags came tubes down into my arms into these cannulas, and around my head down into my right arm and hand. The ECG machine was next to the pole with the bags on. To my right hand side was the oxycodone pain relief. It was in a massive syringe that was controlled by a machine which reacted to me pressing the pain button. I could only have it every 5 minutes. This was scary, it was a lot more than I had last time, and even though I was high and felt drunk, I knew this was a lot more serious than last time. And last time was pretty serious. I cannot guarantee the exact time order of things I’ll be recalling as I was that out of it that some things only made sense or came back to me after the ordeal.

I can’t remember how long it was after I had looked around that I got more information about what had happened, but it wasn’t long before a Dr came and told me. The repair had burst, and poisoned me. I had gone through another huge surgery, with one Dr cutting more intestines away from me, and re-joining them inside me, and another team making an ileostomy on outside of stomach. My body was in severe trauma, and I was nowhere near being out of the woods. My immune system was that buggered, that the smallest thing could have dire consequences. Like the direst. I was full of poison and infections. My body had taken that much of a beating, that it was retaining every last drop of fluid it could. My blood pressure was low, at some points it was enough for me be thought of as dead. So yeah, this was serious. He told me that I must let them know if anything felt off at all. It wouldn’t be long at all until things felt off.

I think it was the same day the Dr saw me, if not then it would have been the day after. I started to get really sharp stabbing pains in the left side of my chest. It was like under my armpit, and it felt like a huge knife was being thrust inside me. I could feel the build-up of pain, and then the stabbing sensation followed soon after. This was occurring every couple of minutes. I let them know, and within a few minutes they disabled drips and machines, and hooked me up to a portable oxygen bottle, and I was wheeled away, they were taking me for a scan. There was no waiting around, it was literally 30 minutes if that between me telling them about the pain, and me being back from the scan. They hooked all the drips and machines back up to me, and then put even more of the sticky pads on me, some on my back this time. It was another ECG machine, but this one could monitor the heart in more detail. It was making sure that I was getting steady readings all over my body. That was all clear which meant it wasn’t my heart that was causing the stabbing sensations. I had now started to struggle getting my breath, when I tried to breathe in, I just couldn’t do it properly, it was like I couldn’t get the breath in. this made me panic obviously because it is scary struggling to breathe. They put the oxygen mask on me again but still I couldn’t breathe correctly. I had also noticed that I was massive. My hands were mega swollen, and my legs felt like they were going to explode. My stomach hurt, and my waist was itching. It was just a really unpleasant feeling all the time. They weighed me, and I had gained 27kgs in fluid. My body was in survival mode due to the beating it had endured, and from what it was still going through. This was what was causing pain all over, and it was the reason why I couldn’t breathe properly.

The scan results confirmed that the pains in my chest were due to collapsed lungs. There was that much fluid on my lungs that it collapsed them under the pressure. My left lung was also 75% full of liquid. I also had severe pneumonia. The right lung was worse, and that was barely able to inflate at all. They needed to place drains in both lungs, but they were concerned that would be too much for my body. Any more traumas and it could lead to total shutdown. Instead I would need to have a nebuliser and physio on chest morning and night. The nebuliser came down from the huge array of instruments above the bed, and I wore this for the majority of the day. The physio consisted of basically having the living daylights beat out of my chest and back, morning and night. Open palmed slaps straight onto the chest and back are extremely unpleasant. However they needed to do this to loosen the chest up and encourage the fluid to dissipate off my lungs. My stomach itself also felt wrong, so more tests and scans were ordered. They came back and showed I was riddled with more infections. This meant that the tube in my nose was pulled out, and was replaced with a different one that was hooked up to a cylinder that pulled a vacuum through it. I had to repeatedly swallow whilst this tube went up my nose, and before long I could feel it working down my throat. They turned this machine on it sucked out brown and green crap straight out of my stomach. It was the infection that had developed inside my stomach, and it took about 2 hours to remove it all. It was disgusting, but once it had been drained, the pressure on my stomach was gone. Further scans showed that I had infections all over my abdomen again. The cannulas were replaced with ones that could have 2 lines attached to one cannula, so it pretty much doubled the number of drips on me. At one stage, we counted 10 separate bags of fluid attached to me. Bear in mind this was in addition to the tubes sticking out of me, and the massive space boots that I had fitted. Let’s not beat around the bush, I was in a bad way. Any one of these infections or complications could have killed me. There was a reason why I was on this ward. It is intensive care for folk who need the most help.

The days I was there were very much the same, I was woken up, and washed. My chest and back got smacked, and the nebuliser went on. I had my visitors, went for scans, and had blood tests every few hours. My stats were taken at least every hour. One night I was in my bed listening to Spotify. It was around midnight and the itching I had was stopping me from sleeping. A Dr was looking at a scan at the nurses’ station. It was a chest scan from what I could see, and as he looked at it, he turned around and looked at me, then back at the scan, and then back at me. He then came over to me and straight up asked me if I had ever had cancer. That seriously scared me. I said I hadn’t, and he said ok and walked off. Not more than 2 minutes later, Drs and nurses came into me, and started disconnected my lines. I asked what was going on, and I was told everything was ok. But it wasn’t enough, I was petrified. I kept asking what was going on, because there was a huge urgency about them all. There were at least 5 people around me all working in sync moving lines, and attaching portable machines. I kept asking what was going on I was petrified. This Dr had just been looking at my scan, asked me if I have ever had cancer, and then I’m being prepped for something. Then, one of the Drs inserted a huge needle in my arm, and I mean it was huge; the metal part of the needle was easy an inch and a half long. It went all the way in my arm, and then a white substance was pumped into my arm. They wheeled me out the ward and I ended up having another CT scan and MRI.

Before long I was back in the bay again, and they hooked me back up to my machines. I was obviously still absolutely petrified at this point, and the Dr who I initially saw checking the scan came to me. He told me that when they were looking at the first scan, they found grey matter all over my lungs, and it strongly resembled the scan of someone who could have lung cancer. Luckily, and much to my relief, it wasn’t cancer. The liquid that had been building on my lungs had turned hard in places, and so was appearing darker on the scans. Just thinking about that night makes me feel cold all over. It makes me shiver, because the vulnerability I experienced that night was something I wouldn’t want anybody to have to go through. Never in my life, have I ever been surrounded by so many professionals, but at the same time feeling so lost and alone. It was truly terrifying.

The scan results meant that I would need to continue with the physio when I woke up, and at night. I would end up staying on the nebulisers until the day before I would be going home. I spent just under 3 weeks in Specialist Surgical Care. I spent each day fighting infections all over my body. Every day was insanely hard, and it was a constant reminder that at any given moment, my body could give up. The soreness that came with the added fluid on me stayed with me as well. I couldn’t even get shorts on, I was swollen that much. My skin looked sore from being pulled that tight. Before I was sent home, I was sent to a ward for a few days, by this stage I was a lot better. I had been given all the details about how to care for the ileostomy, all the details about what I could and couldn’t eat. What I didn’t know at this stage though, was that eating would end up being one of the biggest troubles I would have. The big dressing I had on my stomach was being changed daily as well now, and it was absolutely disgusting. When the gauze came off, there were 4 big pads that soaked up all the fluid, and it was always a stinky brown fluid because I had infections constantly. When they took the pads off to throw away, they only had to knock my stomach and it poured out. As well as the 4 tubes I had fitted draining infections all the time, it was coming out through the big incision down my chest. I ended up having vac therapy which is basically where they hoovered the infection out of me daily. By the time I actually left to go home, the infection was cleared up. The staples that held the wound together were taken out whilst I was in hospital as well. The last time I had these out they were so painful it made me pass out. On the last day on the ward before going home, I had a think about the eventful stay and just what exactly what I had been through.

The bowel exploded again, poisoned me, covered me in infections. Blood pressure went that low, I should be dead. I had pneumonia, collapsed lungs, fluid on my lungs and my body had taken on just shy of 30kgs in fluid through being in that much trauma. I was the most critical on SSC. To say I was lucky to be alive and to be going home was a bit of an understatement. I was released from hospital, and would be stopping at my Aunt Bridgette’s during my recovery.

I was a huge advocate of the colostomy bag when I had it; Poois was so easy to live with. He caused me no issues at all, if anything did happen, it was always something I could laugh about. I named Poois because he felt like a part of me. Well, he was really. And anybody who knew me during that time would confirm that I spoke about him like he was his own identity. Poois was a proper lad. I had a connection with Poois because he saved my life. I had no issues at all in showing him off. I didn’t have the same feelings with the ileostomy bag. I said I would be honest writing this, so I will be. I hated the ileostomy bag. It was awful. I detested it. I did not have the same thoughts as I did when I had Poois. I couldn’t bring myself to have a nickname for the ileostomy because I had nothing but negativity towards it. I didn’t want a funny association with this because it was a nightmare. It caused me so many issues, and my quality of life when I had the ileostomy was poor. I wasn’t living a life. I was just existing. From November 2016, until the ileostomy reversal which would happen in March 2017, my life was at times absolutely terrible. It was so hard, so very very hard. With Poois, I could crack on with my life as normal. The ileostomy didn’t come with such luxuries. I didn’t sleep a full night when I had the ileostomy. It needed attention after a couple of hours. And this isn’t an exaggeration.

As it was formed pretty much at the end of my stomach, when food, water, stomach acid, bile etc needed to move on, it would come out into the bag. The deposits were always liquid; this is because the contents of the bag were the contents that were just in my stomach. The burning sensation of stomach acid coming out was something I could never get used too. Having to get up and go the toilet every 90 minutes or so was depressing. Now I know that sounds far-fetched, but just imagine that you have been though 2 massive surgeries, your body has been beaten the fuck up, you’ve had tubes hanging out of you, fighting infections daily, having aggressive physio to get lungs working again and all the other stuff going on. You just need to rest, and with the ileostomy, I wasn’t going to get that. I had to get up and go the loo all the time. Moving was a struggle as it was, but moving the 12 foot or so that I was from the loo as often as I was doing, was a huge struggle. I would sort the ileostomy bag out, and then it would take me 5 minutes or so of just staying still before I could find the energy to get back to sitting down. I would have a drink, and then maybe 10 minutes later, it was coming out into the bag. Food was the same, in and out. I didn’t sleep properly for those months with the bag. I couldn’t sleep because I was always up draining the bag. Or I was up fitting a new bag because it was leaking. That was another issue with this bag; I was changing it daily because it was leaking all the time. The volume of stomach acid coming out of me was that high, that it would just burn through the adhesive and leak out. I ended up having a seating position and a sleeping position for those months that alerted me to a leak. I wore only cheap white t shirts from Tesco, so if I had a leak, I could see it straight away. Changing the bag was awful this time around as well, as it involved a lot more work to clean it properly, and then dry the surrounding skin. The volume of output also caused issues as I would be in the middle of cleaning it, and then it would pump out more acid, or bile or whatever it needed to eject. So then this would mean the stinging sensation came back, but was then made worse as it was touching more of my skin. It would also cause me other pain because if I was in the middle of a change, and it decided to empty itself, it made me jump because of me reacting, which would then mean the healing incision spanning the length of my stomach would hurt, and the old colostomy bag site also hurt, because that was now a hole in my stomach that was healing. So every action had a reaction to something else and caused pain. I also had daily visits from district nurses, because I had the hole on the left of my stomach where the colostomy was. These visits lasted around 20 minutes, and they would insert packaging into the hole in my stomach, and clean it up. Every time it was cleaned it was agony as it was a fresh wound. They also changed the massive dressing covering the opening they made when they went in during the emergency operation. Overall, it was a tough time. I never felt like I got a break. This was supposed to be me recovering, and instead I was always attending to the bag, or changing it. Or sitting there worrying if it was going to leak everywhere.

I couldn’t even enjoy a normal Christmas, as I spent a lot of time in the bathroom sorting things out. I also spent a lot of my time huddled over in pain, as eating things was a struggle, and my stomach made sure I knew about it. I couldn’t hold my niece and play with her. I had to admire her from a distance. If I wanted to see a friend outside of my aunt’s house, I needed to change my eating and drinking the day before to prepare me. I had maybe 2 times outside of my aunt’s house where no issues presented themselves. I stayed at my aunts for ages in the end. I briefly stopped at my friend Nic’s house, but I went back to my aunts as I needed someone with me at all times. I had passed out twice at Nic’s house when she wasn’t there. I couldn’t risk something happening to me again, so I went back to my aunts after a brief spell at my ma’s place. Another issue I faced was headaches. I had a constant headache the whole time I had the ileostomy. As everything I put in me was coming out pretty much within 12 minutes, it meant I wasn’t absorbing fluids and electrolytes. This left me in a permanent state of dehydration, where my skin was terrible, my nails were gammy and my lips were cracked and dry. The headaches through dehydration were muzzy, they seemed to fog my mind. The combination of headaches, and the medication left my head in a weird way. Combine that with lack of sleep, all during a time when my body was begging for rest, and you can see that I was struggling. I wish I could give you some happy cheery stories of my time with the ileostomy bag, but I can’t. I detested every single minute of it. It was always a burden, it always hurt. I felt like shit constantly. I was in a position where I was able to go back to living in my flat, and I did that. I started to feel the effects of social anxiety, and I struggled to understand how to be around people. My life stayed on a repetition when I was back at my flat. I would start my day by going the loo. Then I would get my place ready for where I was going to sit. And then every couple of hours, I’d go the bathroom for a bit, and sort the bag out. I couldn’t plan things with my friends because if I needed to sort the bag, it was a massive chore. It left me isolated and lonely. I was always angry and felt resentful of a lot of things. I was bitter about the bag, and I hit a low point quite a few times. It was starting to have effects on me in a non-physical way. Instead, my mental state of mind was being viciously attacked. And I was beginning to feel it. There were frequent occasions where I would find myself erupting into floods of tears, and questioning absolutely everything. I couldn’t bring myself to speak with anybody, as just the thought of trying to express what I felt was enough to beat me down again. I was stuck in a vicious cycle of no sleep, always feeling like shit. Times when I could get out and go see my family were marred by time spent in a bathroom sorting it out. I could be just watching TV, and then a wave of anger would eclipse me and I would be angry for hours. No doubt there were times when I snapped at people and got ratty. I seriously fell into the victim role on multiple occasions. This was slowly chipping away at me.

I received a letter from the hospital with a routine appointment with the consultant. I went to the hospital and had the appointment. He called me into his room, and sat me down. He didn’t need to ask me any questions, just looking at me was enough for him to realise I was not coping well. Ultimately, we made the decision that the ileostomy bag needed to go. He could see it was affecting me physically, and also from a mental perspective. I remember saying that if I had a million pounds in cash I’d hand it over if he could sedate me and operate then and there. The black around my eyes, and the constant glazing of my eyeballs backed up the words I was saying. I was so relieved that he recognised this, because if I had needed to plead my case, I don’t think I would have been able to. I wasn’t in the right state of mind to argue a point, I think all of my emotions were numbed for the entirety of the time I had the bag because I felt empty at times. If I wasn’t empty, I was full of anger or rage, or even sadness. It was the total opposite of the colostomy. He checked his schedule then and there, and he said he would have me as top priority. He offered me 2 dates for a reversal, and they were 2 weeks away or 3 weeks away. I opted for the fastest one, because this needed to go. I needed to have some cameras inside me first to check and see what things looked like before they went in, so within the space of 2 weeks, I had scans and cameras put inside me, and then I was admitted in to have the ileostomy bag reversed.

The reversal of the ileostomy bag was nice and straight forward, and aside from being next to some absolute tool for a few days, my stay at hospital was stress free. I got given my own room, because one of the nurses remembered me from previous operations, and she knew I wanted a rest. The day she got me in the room I shall never forget. I got ready for bed around 730pm, just after visiting, and I slept until 9am the next morning. It had been the best night sleep I had got in a long time. It felt absolutely amazing. Waking up naturally, and not because of other patients was fantastic. My stay after the reversal was nice and straight forward, the changing of the dressings was a daily routine, as was me eating toast for every meal, and drinking loads of water. I can’t remember the exact length of my stay for this operation; I think it was a week. When I left the hospital, I once again returned to my aunts and she looked after me.

Although this particular time was vastly better for recovery, there were still some unpleasant things I experienced. Due to the way the ileostomy was reversed, it meant that I had a big hole in me that needed daily attention. It was just a bit bigger than a £2 coin in size, and they had burrowed through the abdominal wall and created a tunnel. The reason for this was so that once fully healed, it wouldn’t have as much of a scar, which was nice. The downside of this though, was it would take much longer to heal, and because they had literally made a tunnel, it left nerves exposed. This meant when they came around daily to remove dressings, it hurt. The pain was horrific. Even being on my oxycodone, which is a controlled substance, it seriously hurt. Once the packing was taken out of the hole, you could see down into my abdomen. You could quite literally, see inside me. They used blue probes to stuff this alginate packing into me. This made me feel physically sick every single time they did it. Each day, 45cm of alginate packing was forced inside the hole, and each day 45cm of wet puss soaked alginate came out. Some days there was that much fluid coming out of the hole, that I had to change it myself, which was extremely unpleasant. Some days I would be in excruciating pain, as stuff would ooze out and end up sitting on the exposed nerve endings that hadn’t yet healed.

My daily medications were oral oxycodone, a neuropathic pain relief called gabapentin to try and calm the nerve endings down, ranitidine, paracetamol and ibuprofen at times. Moving around was painful, getting in and out of cars was off the charts when it came to pain. But I was so happy that I didn’t have the ileostomy bag. I had consulted with the Drs about what I was allowed to eat, and eventually it got to the stage where I was eating only bland white foods that the bowel could deal with. These were mainly white bread, white meat, rice’s, mash potato. Basically, the blandest of bland foods you could imagine. I was still smashing a lot of pain medication down me, because whilst I still had this hole, I still had a lot of pain. I got to the stage where I went back to my flat, as I was in a position where I could start to manage on my own. I still had daily visits to the Drs to have the dressings changed, and packing removed and re-added. My visitation folder for this alone is a hefty folder! My days consisted of waking, going the Drs, coming back home and doing nothing all day. This was the recovery that I needed, but I was wrong to think the struggles were finished just yet. From a surgical perspective, everything was done. The bag was gone, my bowels were plumbed back up as before (albeit with a massive chunk missing; part of which controls when you poop) and I presumed that my experience was nearing the end.

Not long after I got back to my flat, I had decided I wanted to come away from the pain relief. It was still giving me a small cloudy effect in my head, and I had read up about the medications I was on. The oral oxycodone I was on was an opioid based pain killer. It is one of the strongest substances that is prescribed through a controlled system within the Drs. It hits your stomach, and within 5-10 seconds, a euphoric feeling floods the body and removes pain. It also completely removes other sensations too, and I knew that if I continued to feed it to my body, my body would become dependent upon it. It was during this time that I weaned off the medication that I got an insight into what my life would soon be all about.

Being on medication of that strength meant that I wasn’t succumbing to the pain of the stomach cramps that would end up being routine for me. Within a week or so however, I was joyfully introduced to the world of agonising stomach cramps. As I had been eating the bland foods, what  I didn’t feel was the twisting and knotting of the stomach. The reaction to foods was causing the stomach to be pissed off, and it repeatedly knocked me on my arse. I would wake up, and have just say a piece of toast. Within 5 minutes, I would be on the floor, or on my bed curled up in agony. Absolute agony. This would then be followed by the next 2-3 hours on the toilet, or a mixture of being on the loo, and then coming off, to go back on say 5-10 minutes later. It got to the stage where I had my tablet set up in there, so if I ended up being in for a while, I could watch Netflix. I wish I could say I was joking but I aren’t. Due to this, for a while my days consisted of waking, eating, suffering for the day, then eating again around 6pm, then being in the bathroom until around 11pm. The only difference in the evening was I didn’t get the stomach cramps as bad. They were still painful, but not on the scale as the pain the daytime cramps brought. I stayed in touch with the Dr’s during these times, as a few times I was concerned about the pain I was experiencing in the day when I was eating. Each time I was told that it is normal, and it will pass. The issue being was that they couldn’t say when. It could be ok tomorrow. Or next week, next week maybe even next year. They explained it in quite simple terms for me. The bowel has been chopped up in quick succession. Parts of it weren’t used for nearly 2.5 years, and some wasn’t used for 5 months. The body has experienced severe trauma, and it needs time to recover and rest. When they told me I’d be lucky if I was working again in 2017, I was shocked. I knew I would be recovering, but not for as long as this. Each time I went the Drs showing concern about the cramps, and the excessive trips to the toilet, they always reminded me on that the bowel is angry still. It would be akin to expecting a baby to have full use and control over the bowel straight from birth. Some of the little ways that they explained things to me did make me laugh I must admit. So with this information being drilled into me quite frequently, I accepted it and cracked on.

Eventually I got referred to see the dietetics department, as seemingly all foods were causing me issues. Issues with pain after eating, or the hours spent on the loo following having some food. They offered more of the same details, however they concluded the bowel is peristaltic. What this means, is that when I was eating in the day, because the bowel is ‘asleep’, the food was causing the cramps to come on as food was just sitting there doing nothing. This is normal following on from bowel trauma, as it needs time to get itself back up and running. So with that, I had to stop eating in the day completely, and my first meal in the day would be around 6pm. This was the time the bowel was seemingly awake as it didn’t hurt as much after eating. They advised I keep a food diary of when food is going in, and when it is coming out, and also how long it is taking. I still do this now so I can see the progress that is being made. I have coeliac disease now, and I have an issue with dairy, and red meat. I have been on a plant based diet for around 7-8 weeks now, with the occasional sampling of meat as per dietetics advice, to see if I can stomach it. As of now, I can’t handle red meat; my bowel just isn’t interested in trying to process it. Which is a bit of a wounder. I can’t eat during the day every day, 3 days a week I have a little bit of food around 1pm, however it hurts. I have to persist though, because I have got to get the bowel used to these actions. If I eat at 6pm onwards, I can’t go anywhere that night. I have to plan my whole day around getting food in me at 6pm, because it means I shall be pre-occupied in a toilet until close to 10pm. This sounds late, but it is getting so much better.  If someone wants me to see them for example at 7pm, I cannot eat that day. If I need to eat, it needs to be between 6 and 730pm (as it currently stands). The bowel is awake then, and ready for business. So if you wanted to see me and I said no, you probably understand why.

Although the bag was removed, my troubles manifested in other areas. And they popped up in areas that tend to have a stigmata attached to them. And I am going to address them.

I have been through a fair amount of shit in my life; stuff that I know would have made others crumble. That isn’t me being big headed, it is an absolute fact. I have always been able to address issues head on and laugh about things, Poois for example. When shit has hit the fan, I have always had my way of dealing with things, and up until recently, I assumed that I was dealing with things in the correct way. This particular juncture in my life has re-written my understanding of how I need to deal with things moving forward. Because I can’t experience something like this again, and adopt the same attitude I have had all my life. If I did, then I would probably crack up. Whenever I have faced adversity or a serious test in my life, I have managed by joking about things, or seeing the lighter side of things. The reality it seems, is that I was putting a front on for appearances, and letting people think I was ok inside. By doing this, I simply delayed the reactions that I needed to have, to deal with things accordingly.

Not long after having moved back into my flat, I started to experience nightmares that would wake me up in the middle of the night, absolutely covered in sweat, and breathing really heavily. I would sit in bed in a panic, calming myself down by slow counting to 10 in my head. Once I had woken up, I wasn’t falling asleep again, regardless of how tired I was. I would lie in bed at night, trying to drift off, and then even the slightest stomach movement would have me on edge. So a regular tiny gurgle of my stomach, and that was it. My brain is engaging, and straight away it is assuming something is going wrong. I wasn’t choosing to think this; it was my subconscious revisiting what I had been through. I spent countless nights re-living the pain of the bowel exploding; the pain I felt for real was creeping into my thoughts, making me feel like I was in pain. I could lie in bed, feel a twitch in my stomach, and be sat on the end of my bed within a few minutes counting to 10 to calm myself down. Or I would be in a state of panic, and need to take a cold shower straight away to help me out. I also resorted to reading anything I could get my hands on when my mind was trying take me elsewhere. It was like there were 2 parts of me trying to figure out what I needed to hear. So I would have a jabbing pain in my stomach very briefly, but then my mind is convinced something has gone wrong, and I’m going to be in trouble soon. One part of me is trying to say ‘its ok there’s nothing to worry about, it was just a muscle spasm’, or something like that. The other part of me though, was recounting every single detail of what I went through. So as much as I resisted, I lived through the ordeal in my head over, and over and over again. I have thought about the worst moments of it all more times than I ever need too. I have been back in SSC in pain more times than I want to even count. My subconscious was taking me back to the worst times, because I think when it all happened throughout the last 3 years, I never really gave myself the time to process what I had been through. It has only been due to hindsight that I found myself dealing with my issues. I often found myself listing in my head all the massive things I’ve been through with this. When we think back on it all, just saying I am lucky to be alive, is a massive understatement. Do you know anybody else who has skipped death multiple times? When this happens, I become really emotional, and I don’t know whether that will come out as anger, or sadness. I know I am alive, obviously, but that doesn’t stop my mind from wandering, and reminding me constantly of how close I was to losing the fight. What makes it worse though, in quite a strange way, is that my worries and concerns aren’t based on a hypothetical situation. They are based on events that have happened, and as I have experienced them, the memories are still very strong and raw. Emotions and feelings I have about the entire episode are very visceral. At times I have been taken right to the limit of what I would think I can cope with, and they have taken me to some really dark places. I have spent a lot of time seated in anxiety and worry. What if my life is like this forever? What if I never can control when I go to the loo? Am I going to have to run to a loo every time I feel a little movement inside me? Questions constantly spin around in my head, and it has only been recently that I have faced my worries and fears head on. It has made me socially anxious, countless times I have needed to amend plans of seeing people, just because I feel different. Thinking about a room full of people I know asking how I am fills me with dread right now. The whole thing has changed who I am as a person. I feel vulnerable a lot of the time; I used to be a really strong person so I thought, but I think now that what I thought was strength, was merely a distraction technique.

I have learnt that I need to change how I deal with big things in my life. It is ok to have a bit of weakness. I think if I had let myself be affected earlier; it would have made things a lot simpler to process, rather than facing up to weaknesses in one big hit. I am fully aware that there will be times in the future where something happens, and I think of this. And yeah, I shall need to have a little cry. But I’ll be right as rain once I’ve dried those tears up mate!

I’ve had a strong chin all my life, and have accepted blows too it with apparent ease. This time however, it has revealed my weaknesses, and forced me to address them head on. No more can I bottle things up and smile to the masses. If something is wrong, I need to address it as it happens, and figure it out. I need to allow myself to absorb little blows every now and again. We are designed to take blows from time to time. What I don’t think we can do, is to experience big things, and act like we haven’t been changed in any way. Allowing something to have a profound impact upon us isn’t a weakness. It is a coping mechanism that I now believe I will use if I need to again in the future. Looking back, the way in which I dealt with Poois right from the get go was wrong. It didn’t feel wrong at the time, so I don’t regret it at all. But I am confident that if I allowed myself to be more human, and have a little cry at the time, I may have been able to deal with this differently. If I let my emotions be known at the time, maybe it would have stopped me from having a meltdown such as I have.

Because ladies and gentlemen, this last 3 and a bit years, broke me. The last 3 and a bit years, has chewed me up, spat me out and chewed me up all over again. It has nearly defeated me on a few occasions, and left me feeling like I had it worse than anybody else living. They did say in hospital that I would benefit from speaking to professionals about what I’ve been through, but I laughed that off. They did say that it could probably catch up with me; however I didn’t think it would because I’ve always been a mentally strong fella. I’m not ashamed that I have had my struggles, not at all. After all, if we are humble about things, what I have been through is absolutely massive. It has absorbed the last 3 years of my life with operations, worries and concerns. It truly has been a life altering event, and I think that in the bigger picture, I will be a better person because of it. Admitting that this affected me more than I let on it did, is probably a good thing. I have learnt that I am human after all; I have the same range of emotions as everybody else. The ordeal of the last 3 years has stripped me down and exposed my vulnerabilities, and shown aspects of me that have always been there, but they have been covered up. I am still the same absolute idiot I was before, I haven’t changed who I am as a person, I have just realised I have other parts of me that needed to show themselves. I am still going to perve on the ladies, and I still will have my potty mouth. I have allowed myself to accept what I have been through, and sometimes the enormity of it all is overwhelming and it can still cause me to need a little step back, and gain some perspective. I am fully aware that the last few months have been some of the most difficult in my life, and at times I questioned what I need to do to pull myself out of it all. I have been a different person, sometimes afraid to speak up when I’ve needed too. I have felt every emotion a human can possibly feel. There have been times when I have felt like I have no control over anything, other times I have felt like I control the world.

Writing about this now will be closure for me, because right now, I am on the curve of where we go from the darkest place possible, to climbing up towards the light. The night is darkest right before the dawn breaks, and right now, my dawn is just over the horizon. Now that I have allowed myself to accept I am human, and that sometimes we need to talk, I feel better prepared for my future. I had to start exercising to encourage the bowel to work properly, and although my bowel is still being a stubborn little git, the signs are promising for the future. I just need to get my insides working to a level where I can have a normal life. I have lost a good chunk of weight, and I feel better for what I am feeding my body. I have been plant based for a bit now, and it’s working for me as things stand. It is very possible I won’t ever integrate meat back into my diet, and dairy is pretty much all but guaranteed to not be an option moving forward. I am dying for a five guys burger, but I shall just have to do without!! I am hopeful that I can start to resume a normal life soon, a life where I go to work, and see my colleagues. A life where I don’t need to change my eating 36 hours in advance of seeing people. I will still need to run the loo when I need too, as having zero control over that bum muscle isn’t something I can change, so if you see me charging towards you, it would be wise to get out of my way.

So, for those people who may have been wondering where I have been, I am sorry. This has changed me, and I needed to accept that and understand what I need to do differently before I could even tell you what has been going on. Our brains are crazy complex, and mine has just suffered with an overload. I needed to experience the lows that I have done, in order to better appreciate the highs. But more importantly, I needed to acknowledge that the lows were there, and accept them. It has only been by accepting the lows that I respected them enough to understand that I had them, and I now understand that if something is wrong with me, I need to address it. Bottling things up has been my way forever, but this isn’t the case anymore.

If you are still reading this, I encourage you to speak up when things are getting you down. Honour the things you think make you weak. Don’t end up in a situation where you are needing to deal with a load of worries, deal with them as you experience them. Lean on those closest to you, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. You will be so much better off if you do.

And remember, shit happens.