When things don’t go quite according to plan

STOP I WANT TO GET OFF

Having surgery is a rollercoaster ride at the best of times, but what if things don’t go smoothly? how does that feel? it can be quite a challenge to keep positive. Was it something you did? or didn’t do? Was it something someone else did or didn’t do? It doesn’t matter what caused it, this is where you are and you have to get on with it.

All surgeries come with risk, and some more than others, bowel surgery in particular is a surgery with many risks, wound dehiscence ( where the wound breaks down in some way and the scar may open). This complication is strange as it isn’t a question of just stitching you back up, you need to have the wound packed over possibly many months to heal from the inside out. My abdominal wound opened up at the bottom and it took 6 months to fully heal , to view CLICK HERE 

Weirdly it looked very painful but wasn’t really painful at all, and although the finished scar is not as neat as i had hoped, it looks like another belly button as it dints in too, but it healed well without infection.

This most recent surgery has some wound dehiscence , but because of where it is I won’t be putting you through the image. It seems to be closing quicker than the previous one.

I suppose my two most life altering complications were the rectal stump blowout ( in short, rectal stump blowout is a dreaded complication of an often already complicated patient scenario that causes pelvic sepsis )

The stump that was left in situ to be removed at a later date when I was more stable decided to blow its stitches causing pelvic sepsis. I had to have a rectal catheter placed through the burst stump into my pelvic cavity to drain the gunk that was gathered there. Lovely.

I would say it was one of the most uncomfortable things ( excluding or same as an NG tube) that I had. There is a balloon at the top that gets inflated after the tube has been placed, but whenever I sat or moved awkwardly, the damn thing brushed against something inside and caused the most excruciating pain for quite a few minutes. Unfortunately for me, the nurses didn’t really know the pain it might cause and kept insisting I sit out of bed now and again. I eventually spoke to a consultant who needed to reinsert it and he understood my issue and said I couldn’t sit with it, It was all quite traumatic, I had the drain for a good couple of months. This complication in turn caused the fistula and ongoing bottom complications that are still ongoing today but hopefully sorted with this  latest surgery.

The other complication is with Tomas the stoma.

I know, he is lovely and cute and all that, and I probably would have died without him, but he is a complete pest at times. It started very early in my stoma journey in hospital. When Kate my stoma nurse and I discovered that poo was coming out of the bottom of my stoma where it meets my skin.

WARNING, PICTURES OF STOMA POOPING

As you can see, this can be a big nuisance for many reasons

1. The stoma can be quite watery or busier at different times and this can cause the bag to lift as it loses stickiness.
2. This as you can imagine, causes leakage onto the skin
3. And this in turn causes sore skin and incessant itching in that area.
4. It is difficult to change my bag standing up because I can’t put anything under the spout to catch poo as it comes out onto skin as well anyway.
5. I am constantly in a battle with my skin to keep it becoming a real problem, and I like to air it as much as possible when I change it, so it isn’t a quick change for me, it is time consuming.
6. I have the dilemma of deciding on more surgery to move the stoma to the other side of abdomen and hope I don’t get more issues doing that.
7. There are probably more but having a brain fog moment

All I can say is this, there is always light at the end of the tunnel, things do improve, and although it might not be the life you had hoped for, this new life brings new friends and new beginnings and maybe a life that’s worth living.

That leads me nicely ( ok plugging my daughters band Marty) to a song my daughter wrote for the band Marty, and I listened to it and thought it had some great words of encouragement if you are having a tough time coming out the other end of illness.

If you would like to follow the band you can find them on most social media sites @thebandmarty