Day 20 – an update

It’s been almost three weeks since I had my stoma closed and things are going fairly well; I haven’t had any accidents (yet) and I’m slowly reintroducing foods I enjoyed with my stoma. I have found that if I eat too much though (for example a whole oven pizza), I don’t have a fun night. And what I mean by that is a lot of discomfort in both my stomach and my pouch as that much food travels through my gut. I am able to control this with painkillers, though.

My wound was checked by my GP nurse last week. It’s healing nicely but the middle was still a bit open so she left in four of the clips. I’ve got another appointment with her tomorrow where, hopefully, she’ll remove the rest of the clips. I’m looking forward to it being fully healed so I can have a nice bubble bath, something I haven’t been able to do for quite some time.

As for my mobility, unlike last time, my legs haven’t atrophied so walking or standing for any length of time is a lot easier than it was after either of my previous surgeries. My stomach is also not as sore as it was last time. I think both of these are because of how simple and straight forward this last surgery was. Where as back in June, the surgery was quite a bit more complicated (they were reconstructing a lot and moving my guts around quite a bit) and the recovery directly after was difficult due to the aforementioned moving of my guts making them shut down temporarily (otherwise known as ileus). This time was easier as the surgery itself was only two hours long and it involved a lot less handling of my gut meaning I was less likely to develop ileus.

For the most part, I feel fine. I’m able to walk around and do a few household chores but this does tire me out and I find I need to rest for a while before trying to do anything else. I spend a lot of time sitting at the moment (mostly reading or on my computer) but I am starting to go outside. I was able to go for a short walk the other day but, again, this made me quite tired. I’m sure this will improve overtime as it has in the past so I need to be patient, recover isn’t linear.