The Stoma and The Hag
After surgery, I tend to have retching sessions. It’s not very pleasant, for me or for anyone around me. When it happened after the first surgery, when I was on the ward with the lovely, supportive...
View ArticleBad Nurse
I’ve ummed and aahed about whether to write this post or not. I’ve asked myself if it’s the right or the wrong thing to do, and wondered if I should forget it altogether and move on to another tale....
View ArticleThe Great Escape
It’s weird, yet kind of interesting, how being in hospital desensitizes a person. Actually not so much desensitizes as depersonalitizes, if such a word exists, and my computer dictionary is telling...
View ArticleIn At The Shallow End
So, when we last spoke, I was finally leaving hospital after my proctectomy (rectum removal, anus sewn up, tra la la) and going home to recover. I’m going to leave that there, if you don’t mind – and...
View ArticleHome Again - No Ifs, No Butt
After last week’s tangential leap into the present for the never-before-seen blog synchronisation/swimming experiment, it’s back to business as usual, and a quick fade into the past to keep the...
View ArticleBag Puss
Usually I’m pretty good at seeing the positive side of life. I like to think I’m a glass half full kind of person when I’m asked questions that require clichéd replies. This week though, I’ve been...
View ArticleDuck, Soup!
After last week’s leap into what was a particularly horrible bit of the present, in which we lost our lovely baby cat and cried a lot, it is quite a relief to take this week’s post back into the...
View ArticleThe Pyjama Test
Recovering from any operation is a fairly long and tedious process. Recovering from the proctectomy was longer, and more tedious than I’d ever experienced before, and it was my 9th or 10thsurgery...
View ArticlePain In The Butt
Once I’d established I was one of the 27% of Crohn’s patients who have their anuses sewn up and take ages to heal, you’d think I’d have let it go at that. And maybe I would have, if the healing had...
View ArticleThe Drugs Don't Work
It had been half a year since my proctectomy, and still my healing and recovery dragged ever onward with neither improvement nor deterioration. With every day the same routine of waking up, trying to...
View ArticleSweet Dreams
At the end of April, it was my sister-in-law’s birthday. One of those big birthdays with a zero on the end, that people feel honour-bound to celebrate loudly and with huge gestures. I’m sure she...
View ArticleNo Appointment Required
It was mid May, my proctectomy surgery – the one where they took out my rectum, sewed up my anus, rendered me unable ever to fart again; I may have mentioned it before – had been back in October of...
View ArticleShock Treatment
My flare-up was over, but there was still the MRI to get through. I decided I might as well have it, as it would tell us if there was anything going on that I should be worried about. Not that I...
View ArticleCaught in a (Mouse) Trap
Last week I just about brought you up to date – I didn’t give you the results of the MRI, because I haven’t had them yet. I can only imagine that if they were serious in any way, I would’ve been...
View ArticleDr Horrible
A while ago, I wrote a post about a bad nurse I had to contend with while I was in hospital last October. It got quite a lot of attention, and a few people wanted to know if I’d ever had a bad doctor....
View ArticleA Walk In The Park
This week, we are firmly in the present. In this particular present, I am in bed with a very painful gut and problems eating. I have hardly any energy and none of this is helped by the pneumatic drill...
View ArticleThe Patient Is Exempt
I’m now well into week 2 of this flare-up and I can’t say I’m enjoying it terribly much. It hurts when I eat, it hurts when I don’t, and I feel sick half the time. The morphine makes me feel sicker,...
View ArticleThat Sink In Feeling
In a week where the world breathes a sigh of relief at the Americans making a better voting decision than we in the UK did last time round; where the cuts in our country are so bad that a disabled man...
View ArticleEvery Cloud
In 1988, my surgeon told me I had two years left to live. That sounds melodramatic doesn’t it? If not slightly ridiculous. I thought that at the time. I was pretty sure for the whole of those two...
View ArticleCarry On Up The Pain Clinic
I am now on day 3 of not having a flare-up any more, and it’s really rather fantastic. I’m tired, of course – not because of the evil Crohn’s malaise, but because I spent the last 2 days doing...
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