Let us all have a think about our own journey’s of IBD, where are you now? still struggling? still coming to terms with your diagnosis? or are you lucky enough to be in remission?
We have all been in one of these positions at some time or other and unfortunately some are stuck in one of them for a long time. Talking poo is a taboo subject even now in 2020 so many people won’t talk about their bowels for fear of humiliation. They can only just about speak to a doctor.
It can be a fear of cancer, a fear of someone poking around and looking into their bottom. A fear of whats to come. I know this as I have been there too, at 19 years of age having a nice young doctor poking his fingers up my bottom is mortifying I can tell you. Being in hospital with a flare up and soiling myself before I could get to a toilet, pressing the bell in the toilet after I missed and got it all over my nightie and slippers then a new young male nurse coming in and me saying would he mind if I had a female nurse because I felt scared of what he would think, and too self conscious to let me help me clean myself up.
Seeing A LOT of blood instead of poo and wondering what the hell was happening inside my body. Being threatened with an NG tube if I continued to be sick every time the pain waves came. I will never forget…
Fainting with the pain when having a bowel movement and my husband finding me on the floor. Not having the energy to get out of bed for days/ weeks at a time. If you have a fear of needles you soon won’t have, blood thinning injections so you don’t clot because you can’t move except to try and make the toilet ( with a drip ) cannulas every four days because each one clogs up or just because they have to be change, blood tests galore. You are lucky if you have someone who can find your vein straight away, otherwise it’s pin cushion time, especially if they can’t get a cannula in first time, OUCH.
Most people will need surgery at some point in their lives, you are very lucky if you don’t. The surgery isn’t for the faint hearted either, it is major surgery where parts of your intestines will be removed. You may then have other manifestations on IBD, fistulas, perianal disease, skin issues, eye issues, sores, mouth ulcers of the type specifically given to those with the disease and many many other life altering problems that refuse to mend. The surgeries seem never ending, no one told you what else you might have to fight through.
But you do fight and that is why you are all awesome.
Never underestimate the shear strength of an IBD patient, they have been through hell and back………………… and not just once.
