My Colostomy

It was the week before thanksgiving and I started to have some pain in my lower left abdomen area. No biggie. I have had some pain there before and it always went away. More importantly I had a party to go to. No time for pain. It had actually been hurting for the week before, but I don’t complain much so no one really noticed. I partied like a rockstar as I usually do and got to my friends house about 3am and went to sleep.I woke up around 8am in massive pain. I was told to go to the doctor. The emergency room in fact. “No thanks. I’ll be fine”, I said. I don’t need a stupid doctor….

So the next day I wake up in massive pain. OK, Ill go to the doctor. I call and they squeeze me in. A doctor I have never seen cause I haven’t been to the doc in years. He tells me I have Diverticulitis. HA! I don’t think so. I’m only 39. I don’t have that old person’s disease. No way.. He tells me I should feel better in a couple of days. He gives me some prescriptions and I am off to the pharmacy.

Two days later, guess what? I feel really bad. I mean REALLY bad. But It will go away I tell myself. It doesn’t. 3am rollsa round and I decide, OK. I should probably go to the emergency room. So I get a ride down there and they check me in.

At this point I feel like an elephant is standing on my stomach. I have been run over by cars, flipped out of jeeps, wrecked on motorcycles, yet I have never been in this much pain. Something must be wrong.

They do a CT scan and tell me I have an abscess in my colon and it doesn’t look good.

So they decide they need to operate to fix the problem. Yee-Haw! They did put me on some more antibiotics telling me that they might help. I just think they wanted me to stay a few extra days to pad the hospital bill, but who knows for sure. Anyway, a few days after they found the abscess, they are telling me I need surgery that will result in the colostomy. At this point I really didnt care too much what they did.

The surgeon came in and told me the news, surgery resulting in a colostomy bag was the only option. If things went well, we could do a resection in 90 days or so. OK, Can I have another shot of Demerol first?

I think it was saturday morning at about 3am when they were finally preparing to cut me open and remove 8″ of my colon. At this point, I was so high on the drugs that I didn’t care what they did or what they removed. I just wanted it to be over and to be out of pain. They wheeled me in to surgery. Last thing I remember is trying to count backwards from 10 and trying to make it all the way to 1. I think I made it to about 8…

I don’t even remember being in recover. Next thing I know I am in a luxurious private room.

I wake up in the hospital after having the colostomy surgery done and I don’t feel as bad as I thought I would. Of course I am still on lots of pain medications. I had to stay in the hospital after the colostomy surgery for about 6 days. It was a lot of laying around doing nothing. I did get a morphine pump for the pain. WOOHOOO!

During the hospital stay, a nurse came in to show me how to use the colostomy supplies they had given me. You have to stick a removable bag over the stoma to catch your bodies waste. Talk about fun. Just what I want, a bag to collect my shit. My friends starting calling me “shit-bag” or “semi-colon”. Good friends…

During the next three months, things were pretty much back to normal. I am in outside sales, so I was able to still do my normal job. I just couldn’t lift anything heavy for about 6 weeks.

After 3 months, I went back to the doctor for a follow up visit. Luckily everything was healing nicely so they were able to schedule me for the colostomy reversal.

Back to the hospital i go! I checked into a new hospital in town and prepared for the reversal. I have never been so excited to have someone cut me open.

They knocked me out with some quality drugs and once again i woke up in a recovery room. The pain was even less this time. I just felt a little sore. Basically they cut the stoma loose and pull it back inside then re attach it to the bowel. They use a titanium ring and a special surgical stapler to hold it all together. Pretty advanced stuff. I was only in the hospital this time for about 4 days. They have to make sure everything is holding up and you don’t have any leaks or infections. I did good.

Once this was done, I was back home to rest and take it easy for another week. It took about 6 weeks for me to feel really normal again. It has now been over 6 months since the colostomy reversal and I feel great!