Living with fistulas can be so unpredictable. One minute you have discomfort and excessive leaking, the next nothing. You and your surgeon have no idea whats going on, is it healing? oh hang on a minute it’s started again.
My vaginal fistula has returned after serious major surgery to get rid of the little bugger. I am upset but most of all I kind of knew it would happen. They are dreadful to heal and most don’t, and folk live with them for years. Suffering with leakage, either fluid if not connected to a bowel, or faeces if it is connected, so that faeces comes out of the vagina/ bladder/skin.
All the surgery for IBD are major and hard going, and that is the same for fistula.
I don’t actually understand why these things are so difficult to cure, but I also don’t understand why we are left for years without much help. It usually take me a year each time it starts again after surgery, to actually get anything done and that means spending hundreds of pounds on pads and underwear during that time, not to mention the discomfort and pain it can cause.
THIS IS SURGERY FOR A MUSCLE TRANSFER AND FLAP SURGRY TO TRY AND CURE THE FISTULA, IT HASN’T WORKED.
I have a stomal fistula which I have had since my first surgery nearly 5 years ago, I decided to leave it be until the other fistula was sorted, but that seems never ending and the stomal fistula is causing so much more problems.
It has grown a lot since those early days where just a small amount of poo would come out of it as well as the stoma end. I could just about cope but now, it looks like another stoma and it seems to poo more that the stoma itself, as I suspect it connects further down and diverts the output to the fistula. It is at the skin edge so the output usually seeps under the bag at some point. I have also had terrible trouble with ballooning, where the bag lifts in the night because of excess gas, this then causes leaks usually near the fistula.
THIS IS THE EARLY DAYS OF THE SMALL FISTULA
THIS IS IT NOW, I HAVE ALSO HAD A REACTION TO MY BAG WHICH CAN HAPPEN SOMETIMES.
It is very difficult to cut the wafer to fit around my weird shaped stoma, and take me a few goes at it even now. AS YOU CAN SEE, THE FISTULA CAN CAUSE SEVERE SKIN EROSION UNLESS THE BAG FITS PERFECTLY, AND STICKS WELL.
I feel it won’t be long before I admit defeat and have a stoma revision surgery. Does anyone else have a fistula story that has become frustrating?
