Two words.....BUTT BURN!!!

Oh my WORD! THIS! Just....THIS! Okay, so when you start pooping like a regular human being for the first time in forever, its like liquid. Diarrhea. And you are going to the toilet OFTEN! I think I was going 10-12 times a day and then 5 times a night. As a result of this, your anus gets what is beautifully called butt burn. Remember that terrible, painful, burning rash I was talking about around my stoma? This is basically the same thing but around your anus and my GOSH does it hurt. This is pain is the worst pain I had ever felt in my entire life. Honestly, it got so bad that I considered marching into the hospital and having my surgeon put the gross bag back in, permanently. That's right, a single, 25 year old mom would rather life her life with a bag of poop on her stomach than deal with this...butt burn. The worst part is that there isn't anything the doctors can really do about it. Mine gave me a prescription for a numbing, lidocain ointment to put on my anus and that helped quite a bit. But if you want it to heal (and trust me you do) you want to go after this stuff called Calmoseptine. Now, this requires some balls because its not a prescription but you have to get it from the pharmacy. Also, they generally don't stock it so you have to have them special order it. Also also, you usually have to spell it out because no one knows what the Hell it is, so you basically need to tell them to order some butt rash cream. But it works and it works well, SO GET IT! It takes 3-6 months for your anus to scar over and not burn anymore, so sit back and prepare for a long and difficult healing process.

ITS THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!! Or....surgery

FINALLY! This was going to be over. My father drive me to the hospital to have this stupid bag of poop removed from my stomach forever. Over a year had passed and I was so ready to show off my belly again and wear tight clothes and.....JEANS! Oh jeans....I had been wearing yoga pants and PJs since the bag was put in and I was ready to jump back into my old wardrobe. Oh yeah, and I would be able to poop out of my butt. I know, it's weird seeing someone so damn excited over being able to poop but seriously, you will never understand what this process is like until you actually experience it. Being excited for something as strange as poop is normal for us colitis sufferers (am I right?).

This surgery was just like the others. Small, cold room, strange people, IV, revealing hospital gown. When I woke up though things were very different. If you read my last posts you know about me not having pain meds when I woke up (it was bad). I didn't get them this time either but it wasn't as bad and I could understand a little better why. You see, pain medications like morphine block your bowels and make you constipated. When you're trying to use your newly built bowels for the first time in over a year constipation is bad news, so I could understand why they kept me off them. However, I was groggy for a lot longer than usual when I woke up, it was strange. It's also strange since after you wake up, all the doctors and nurses eagerly await your fart. That's right, they want you to fart (takes about a day or so). When you do they allow you to eat. I spent another 5 days in the hospital and went home, finally able to poop and use my newly built colon, but this isn't the end of the story. It takes months to feel better and I ran into way more bumps in the road than I had in my previous surgeries.

Is this over yet?

No....no it's not. After my second surgery I was given a new type of illeostomy bag, one that had a thicker wax seal but wasn't much different than the last one. After the infection was dealt with things were fine. I was dealing with one problem though that I could not find a solution too....the skin rash! Oh...my....gosh this was terrible. You see, when you have a bag on your stomach and your intestine is constantly pumping out diarrhea into it, you're going to get skin contact, this is normal. However, when the new stoma was made, the whole where the feces came out of was on the side rather than on the top (this was probably due to the rude doctor I had to deal with and who really needs to lose her job....*cough cough*) Anyway, because of this the feces that was coming into my bag was getting under the wax seal of the bag and not only did this lead to the occasional leak and terrible midnight wake up call, but it also led to a horrible, burning, rash type of something around my stoma. I could not for the life of me get it to go away. It burned and hurt and nothing helped. There were nights when I would pop extra pain pills and lay down in tears because the pain was so bad.

I did however (eventually) discover that changing my bag daily helped a little. The only problem to this was I had to order supplies and extra bags ALL THE TIME! One bag should typically last 3 to 4 days, but I was changing them daily. So I had to call and tell the guy that I needed more every few weeks and had to tell him I needed illeostomy bags and it was embarrassing but I did it. I also had the thought that the final surgery was coming up and after that everything would be BETTER! Right?! Right? Please tell me I'm right.....(Hint.....it doesn't get better for a while.)