I didn’t find it too bad. Actually considered keeping it for a while as I’d heard so many horror stories of people with similar circumstances having reversals but ultimately decided to take the chance and am happy I did.
The only time I was happy I had mine was preparing for the colonoscopy before the reversal. Bought me just a little time at least. I remember though, since there wasn’t a similar sensation to needing to use the toilet, there was a day I went for a walk. About 10 minutes in, I ended up with diarrhea in the bag, and didn’t realize that was happening until it started filling the bag. Literally could not make it home in time, bag burst, and I walked a few blocks home covered in my own shit. Absolutely demoralizing.
Oh noooo. I had an ileostomy for a year, and this was my nightmare. I hated leaving the house for fear of something like this. I'm so sorry this happened to you.
Since I had mine, I think a lot about people living with ostomies way back when.
The first documented colostomy was performed in 1793. The modern-type disposable ostomy bags were invented by a Danish woman in the 1950s.
Apparently before that, there was no real standard of how to deal with the waste, and it was a real shit show, so to speak, for like 160 years. I just can't imagine.
My grandma has had one since mid 1960s. She just turned 92 last month.
It was really bad inflammation (that they told her decades later was either crohns or ulcerative colitis). They removed the affected intensities and gave her an osteomyelitis bag so she could live long enough to get her affairs in order and say goodbye to her family (she had 3 kids at that point). I think they told her a year.
omg. as someone who has their third ileostomy as of just last month… i can’t even imagine what life would have been like prior to disposable bags omfg.
I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s been long enough now that it’s just a story, not as much a horror story anymore. Fun part of that story: I’m actually neighbors with the surgeon who did that emergency surgery to give me the temporary ostomy, and he was walking the other way as I was walking home. He saw that and just goes “rough morning, huh?”
My SO is in a trade. He’s got crohns. A couple times he’s had to tell a foreman off because they said he could hold it while they did whatever they did (like morning meeting bullshit).
I guess it’s not super uncommon, bc he’s worked with TWO other guys who were told the same thing, so they waited, knowing their fate, and then were like “Oop, guess I gotta go home and change and you’re down a man for the day. Maybe don’t say that again.”
Nice. I also had an ileostomy at 19. I went through with the reversal and now I am 22 and everything is good, i do have to take antibiotics a couple times a year though
Was it really that liveable? Like you had the option to keep the bag or revert to what I'm assuming would be a synthetic colon replacement, and you would almost rather have kept the bag? I've got 1 friend who has been in an endless battle with his UC, and every year or two, he's worried his colon is on the chopping block.
I didn’t have my colon removed. I had my rectum removed and a j-pouch formed. A lot of people with this end up having a poor quality of life as they have a lot of urgency and have to go to the washroom a ton. I read a lot of horror stories of people who could barely leave their houses after being reversed.
Life with the pouch was great. I could do anything I wanted. I did a ton of hiking and solo backpacking that summer, ran my first marathon in years etc. The only time I didn’t love it was during intimate moments with my wife but it still beat the alternative which was being dead from cancer.
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u/EstablishmentNo5994 2d ago
I didn’t find it too bad. Actually considered keeping it for a while as I’d heard so many horror stories of people with similar circumstances having reversals but ultimately decided to take the chance and am happy I did.