Need to apologize it

I want to apologize to all who have written to me and i have not responded lately .it has been a rough go since the last posts i wrote as my stoma has gotten very large which is making it very hard to do things at least for me . I have had to stop walking which I love dearly doing as it was my one way of forgetting about this way of life for a few mins each day .When i am in the house to do little things i have to do one thing then go and sit for awhile as the stoma is so large now i have to hold it with one hand and I wear a girdle and an ab binder to try and keep things in place but they don't work any more :( . I have also had to stop driving my car as the steering wheel pushes this stoma and i am afraid should i ever have to stop fast for some reason that i would do some serious damage i don't want . Our granddaughter has a friend whose little sister had a colostomy and sadly passed away just before christmas as she fell out of bed onto her stomach and hit it and bled to death , and i didnt want that happening to me so I stopped walking as well for that reason this winter as our road is very icy


On top of all of that my output for a colostomy has been basically mega out put even though it is thick pasty stuff to some days i have had up to 11 times one day and over half of that day was watery ,


Anyway i saw my surgeon on Feb 3 and he had the nerve to come in and smile with that smile he has and said Catherine good day how are we today , and i quietly looked at him and said that was not a good question to ask me , so he asked why and i turned sideways and opened up the big sweater i wear when out in public to try and hide this and told him quietly to take a look at me and then ask me that question again , so he said let's take a look at this , and he did and his next response was let's get this fixed , and again i quietly told him FIX it now , he showed me what he had to do the last time and what would be done this time , this time he has to reconnect the colon where he had to take a small chunk out because of the stool that was still in it and then he will be putting back at this point i don't think you can call it stoma as it is the size of the palm of my hand now and is any where depending on how long i am on my feet from 5.5 to 6.5 in long .After he looked at me he told me to see his secretary and she would get things all finalized for the reversal and by the time i left his office my surgery was booked for Mar 19 , so 10 days from now i will be in surgery , he told me the first surgery will be between 6 to 7 hrs long , i won't say i am not scared but i would rather go in on my own two feet this time and know what is about to happen , then before i left the city that day i had all the blood work done and my chest x-ray done as well , on the 10 of Feb i went to see the anesthesiologist to talk about what they will be doing to put me out and to control pain , I will be honest that part terrifies me as he said that they will be doing a spinal epidural and any thing near my spine terrifies me (I went thru surgery 20 years ago where they took a chunk out of a nerve along my spine and now i have a droopy left eye at times and it droops more since this last surgery , i also have areas on my body especially my back where the skin is numb and if you get say and itch i litterally take something sharp to scratch so messing around that area terrifies me ) he said not to worry but then how do you not worry when you are awake when they do this part :( .The surgeon says i will have to have a temporary ileostomy till the large colon has healed so in three months after all the other stuff has healed i go back in for surgery again this time some where between 2 to 3 hrs long to put back the small intestine he will take out for the ileostomy , so for the next year i am looking at taking time for myself to heal properly this time and no rushing things .



So again i apologize for not answering my blog responses but i really don't have a lot of energy , still not sure why it is being zapped just because this stoma is so large but that is when the energy started to disappear on me .



Take care


Cathy

Cathy, we don't know each other, but I just want to wish you all the very best for your upcoming surgery. I hope it all goes smoothly, and that life takes a big turn for the better for you this spring!Chris

Hi Cathy, sorry for the stuff you're going through but it sounds like there's a plan to make things all better. You don't owe anyone an apology. I hope you have all the help you need to get through this thing and I look forward to good news form you in the near future.Prayers and all good wishes,Mike

Hi Cathy. I am very sorry for what you are going through. I will pray that things will get better for you and that you surgery goes well and that you will have strength and courage for your surgery. The following link has some stoma protection covers that might help in the meantime. http://www.stomagear.com/?gclid=CJSyoNe-q8QCFUeEfgodjaEATQTake care and stay as positive as you can. Connie

Good luck Cathy. I will be praying for you. Better days WILL come!

Stories of Living Life to the Fullest from Ostomy Advocates I Hollister

thank you everyone for the good thoughts , i have been afraid to say anything any more about what i have to deal with as i have done it on one other group and only to ask for advice and was recently told that all i do is complain and not accept the advice even though what they had said wass0mething i had actually done and that all i wanted was pity , that was the last thing i want or need , but hopefully after the two surgeries are done i can get back to a somewhat normal life again , as it is right now like our grandkids say i spend more time in the bathroom then i have ever done , and if i don't have this surgery this way then it will be happening anyway but as another emergency one and at least this way as much as the first part of it terrifies me (the actual surgery i won't know one way or the other so that part i am not worried about to much a little yes but at least if something happens i won't know ) the first part with the anesthesiologist that terrifies me but it has to be done .So i truly thank you all for your good thoughts and will let you know how the first one goes when get back on line again .Again thank you very much for all the good thoughts and prayers Take care Cathy

kakie, as said before, absolutely no need to apologize to any of us. But it's good to hear from you. I so hope all goes well. And you bitch and complain all you want here. If anyone doesn't like it, I'll give them an earful! Heehee

I too will say a prayer that the Lord will wash away your fears and pain. That He will hold you close to Him while He guides your surgeons hands.

thank you Zywie :) and when this is all over i will have to get your email again and sit down and write you a good email so we can get to know each other :) Mrs A. thank you very much for the prayers and good thoughts they are much appreciated . My surgery date and time has been set for tomorrow i am to be in the hospital for 6:30 am and the surgery will be at 8 so i am told , it will take about 6 to 7 hrs and then if all goes the way it should and as the surgeon says i continue to surprise him and i hope it continues as i told him this time i should be only there for a week :) Again thank you all for the good thoughts and prayers Take care Cathy

Hi CathyThere are a lot of us pulling and praying for you. All the best. Please let us know how you are doing when you can.Wishing you many blessings from Redondo.

Hi Kakie56, Good luck with your surgery and we will be here when you are able to post once again. Will keep you in my prayers, praying for a speedy recovery. Take care. LH

Hi Everyone , thank you all for the good thoughts and prayers .I had my surgery it was a much longer one then he said it would be , instead of 7 hrs it turned out to be 11 1/2 hrs when he told me that he said he had booked nothing else that day just in case , and at the size of the old stoma he was prepared . I did have the spinal epidural and the doc doing it was very nice and explained completely how it would be done and the person who was holding me up so they could put the catheter in for it was a very large doctor so no problem holding me :).I am not sure though now that it is out if there is a side effect to it and i am hoping it is not a permanent one , you 4 days after the surgery they took out the catheter from my back as the meds were done any way , the doc who did it said that about 6 hrs later the pain would start and he was right , my surgeon had ordered the pain med Diluded for me i did take it twice the first day and my surgeon was told NEVER NEVER again so he put me on morphine which helped , well now that i am home and the codeine the surgeon had me on to try and thicken my output up some is done the pain is starting to get worse again , it starts about mid back where they had the catheter and goes down the back , last night i was woke up with a pain I hadn't had since they first took it out and it felt like i had been stabbed with a knife that was twisted and now the pain still is there and i am taking tyelnol extra strength 4 x a day and in between Advil 3 x a day , not touching the pain very well .This time is much different then last year , you see he used a special machine on the suture area , that was one of the reasons for being in the ICU for 6 days , instead of putting on dressings he had a strip that looked like a sponge on it with a tube attached to it that went to a machine that sucked out all the moisture and any drainage there was from the wound . With that machine on i was only able to get up to sit in a chair and that was it so they also had a urine catheter in for those days as well . Once they took those out i was up and walking on my own with out help (a bit shakey but no help ) Then I was transferred to what i called the floor from hell , my own personal hell .You know the old saying what goes around comes around well the floor they put me on was the one i worked on 25 years ago as well as the floor that ended my nursing career .They took me into my room and the first thing that i saw was paint peeling off the wall , i did get the window side although all you saw was the roof , the heater was on so the room is about 100 degrees ( I know that because when i worked we put a thermonter sorry for spelling in the room just to see , they also put the window up a crack so there was a bit of air ,later on they brought in my room mate (now please to think me rude as i am a big lady and my MIL is a very large lady so i have nothing against large people trust ) who was about 400 pounds , that night is when my hell really started when they put a CPAC mask on her now that is the first time i ever heard one and hopefully the last tine as well , this lady should have been put in a room on here own , because with the noise of the mask and the fact she snored i swear on a stack of bibles three different types of train sounds , as well as she made sounds that sounded like the staff dragging the large laundry bags down to the shute(i know those sounds as i drag those bags many times when i worked there) and on top of that she farted all night (sorry no polite way of saying that ) I spent most of that night going back and forth to the bathroom in hopes of drowning out her nosies to no avail :( .So I went for 24 hrs with no sleep , i was a very cranky woman , When the staff came in all cheerful they looked at me and said good morning i let them have it and when asked why so cranky they were told , and they were told that a surgical patient should never have been sent to a chronic floor (the nurse i had for the day didn't realize i had worked there years ag) and she says this is not a chronic floor , she was told to take a walk and look again .Then i find out the patient in my room was their favorite as she is one of theirs who had to go to surgery to remove her leg .When my surgeon came in a little while later with that smile of his and said good morning Catherine i looked at him and said is it , he looks and said oh no what's wrong , so i told him to sleep in a room with a 400 pound patient with a cpac mask and snores like a train , then tell me what's wrong . then i looked at him and said LET ME OUT OF HERE , he smiles and said I think we went thru this last year , and i told him yes but for different reasons , so he told me yes i could go home he then told me he would be back to see me in an hr , I looked at him and said i can go home today and he laughed and said yes , I was down that hall as fast as i could go to the nurses station to call my husband to tell him to come straight from work no stops straight to the hospital and SPRING ME OUT OF THIS JOINT the nurses at the station just smiled . When on that floor once they realized i didn't need them to empty my pouch i never saw them unless they had to give me my meds or i called for pain meds other then that i never saw them Since coming home i am doing fine , i am up walking and have even started to take shorts walks out side to get my strength back up as i have one more surgery come June , my legs still feel as i call them jelly legs but i am sure that once i get back to walking and the strength comes back that will change . The only problem and i think it is getting bigger is that my new stoma is now leaking . i think it started when my primary nurse brought in a sample from convatec with a flange that you don't have to cut just shape , and it felt okay but after the second day if started to feel weird so i took the pouch off and the flange was starting to cover over the stoma as it is so small this time , so I wore the new appliance for two days and then had to take it off and where i had at one time no open areas i now have three as well i just had to change it again ( it has been if lucky once a day but some days twice a day because of leaks ) as well there is an area at the bottom of the stoma on the skin that is all red and very raw so i have no idea how to get that so it is not that bad .I have to have this thing for 3 months i really . I also have a small area on the suture line that there is still a bit of drainage after taking out the staples .Other wise my life feels almost like it is close to being back to the old way . the surgeon did tell me though that i will get a hernia where the old stoma was because it was so large that they had to staple that area and there will be a lot of tension on it , but if i do get one and he says i will (i am hoping to surprise him again and not if i am lucky for a change ) he will not fix it till i lose 100 pounds so this girl is off to start her walking and surprise him again , as i don't think he believes i will ,, but then i have as he said in the ICU to me /my DIL and one nurse who was there i continue to surprise him and when he was asked why he said because of last year .He told them and me i should not be here and to have gone thru 2 major surgeries and to be moving about like nothing had ever happened , he just says as does my family doc as well I am their miracle patient . I just tell them as my boys and grandkids say i am a stubborn old girl who does not like to sit down for long . lol When i told him to let me out 16 days ago I also told him i make a bad patient he said no you actually make you make a good patient as you come in get done what is needed and then you make your mind up you want out lol . Well i have gone on a long time but that is me so far hopefully my two little glitches will soon work out and the next 3 months go fast . Thanks for listening and for all the prayers and good thoughts they helped :)Till later take care Cathy xox

Welcome home~ I'm happy to hear you are up and moving about to get your strength back as well as prepare for your next surgery.

Thank you Mrs A for the welcome home , I am up and moving but slowly but as my boys say I am a stubborn woman and don't sit for long lol . It is hard right now though as i ran into problems with the appliances again , i am using (till the new ones come in hopefully this week ) the sample ones the primary nurse brought for me to use and i react to the brown tape ones so i now have skin problems around the tape area as well i have had major leakage problems so the skin up close to the stoma is now breaking down as well , then the nurse tells me the open area that he had hoped if left open to the air would dry up and heal , sadly it didn't and now i have an open area that is 1 inch deep by 3 inches in width , he put some special packing in it and a dressing to keep the area clean so i am hoping that heals up as fast as the ones last year did as i don't want to delay this next surgery if i don't have to . Well off to rest very tired today for some reason Again thank you for the welcome home it is much appreciated Take care Kakie56