Health Update

For more than a month 📆 I’ve been dealing with a wound-like sore adjacent to my stoma. It hurts, it’s gross-looking, it’s increased in size, 📏 it’s morphed and changed and I don’t know if it’s better or worse, but I’ve been seeing my ostomy nurse 👩‍⚕️ regularly to monitor it. (Ostomy nurses are highly specialized and awesome practitioners, and I don’t know how, as an “ostomate”, I’d function without them.)

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Through all of this, imagine trying to have to care for a wound in a dampish place that you have to keep dry because it goes under a heavy-duty adhesive barrier (also known as a wafer), that holds your ostomy 💩 bag to your belly. An appliance system that you usually leave in place for a few days, but I’m currently changing no less frequently than every two days 📆  so that I can monitor the situation. (And because the situation of a dampish wound causes adhesive failure, which causes leakage of poo 💩 under the barrier, which results in more frequent changes… hopefully before the poo reaches the outer edge of the adhesive! 🧻)

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At Friday’s visit, my nurse made the decision that I probably have peristomal pyoderma gangrenosum 🔥, an ulcerous infection that definitely looks as gross at it sounds like it would, what with a root word of gangrene 🤢 in there. If you really want to see, I’ve been monitoring it with pictures every other day. 📸 The condition could be mirroring the ulceration that currently is happening in what’s left of my rectum and anus (ya never cure ulcerative colitis, even when you lose the colon… though when I lose the rectum and anus 🔪 on April Fools’ Day, it should help. No kiddin’.). The game plan for now involves Triamcinolone Acetonide, a dental ointment for canker sores (since it’s made for healing in dampish situations) and 40 mg of prednisone 💊 for at least the next three weeks.

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If you’ve ever been on prednisone for an extended time, you know that it has some super-annoying side effects. Fortunately, the side effects I experience are energizer bunny type 🔋 productivity and night sweats 😓. Not too shabby, compared to how it treats some people. I’m looking forward to the extra energy. Gotta find that silver lining ⛅️. 

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The pic shows most of the things involved in an appliance change. Yeah, it takes a little time ⏱, but I’m getting more efficient every time. (It’s been nearly four months since the colectomy. Four months filled with lots of learning.)

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