Welcome to my new blog post/s on Anxiety. This post aims to provide educational information about anxiety, as well as my own experience in diagnosis, treatment and coping with daily anxieties. Today, I will be sharing information I have gathered, sharing my own thoughts, as well as articles I’ve found useful and my own hints and tips. This is be expanded as my mental health improves. Mental health struggles are nothing…
IBD
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Stoma Life – YEAR THREE
What I’ve Learnt and Achieve in the Last Twelve Months with my Ostomy Year Three with Priscilla has been one of calm in the mist of chaos. I made the gutsy decision to say goodbye to my sassy stump and hello to the Barbie butt club. My mental recovery has and still is the hardest part of living with IBD and a stoma. It is a hidden undercurrent and blinds me…
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Discharge Euphoria
“You can go home today” The most joyful words that can be uttered during a morning ward round when you have been in hospital for anything more than a couple days. You think back to your home and all the wonderful lovely things that await you – a soft bed. A shower! Fresh pjs and bed sheets. No more bleach smell. Peace, quiet and your creature comforts. But what…
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IBD & My Relationship with my Parents
Chronic Illness and Family. Being sick definitely changed the dynamic of our family. Diagnosis Day landed a brick in our household that came from nowhere. We didn’t know how to act, we didn’t know how to communicate and we didn’t know how to respond to what I was being told – You have an incurable illness that will be lifelong and difficult at times. I remember just being glad it wasn’t…
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Dealing with the Dark Cloud of Depression While Taking on IBD
No one feels their best when they are unwell, and this is no different for those with chronic illness. There is an ebb and flow to anything chronic – meaning there are good and bad days – but what happens when your bad days outweigh your good days? I hit rock bottom six months into my IBD diagnosis. I struggled to find a treatment plan that worked. This involved months…
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Do I Consider Myself Disabled?
Inspired by the KTMY post ‘Am I Disabled? Why you should define chronic illnesses as a disability’ Does ‘Invisible Illness’ Equal ‘Disability’? Controversial but a hotly debated topic for those within the chronic and invisible illness community. Lots of questions get raised such as: What is a chronic illness? What is an invisible illness? Should this conditions come under disability? What exactly is disability? How do we measure this? How…
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Pain: When does Acute turn into Chronic?
Pain. It’s all relative. It was last Spring and I had just started on a new pain relief medication, after a stint in A&E. I was already on Amitriptyline and now we were adding Gabapentin into the mix. I had been living with my rectal stump for almost eighteen months at this point and every day it was getting more and more uncomfortable. With it’s intimate location, I was limited…
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This is Not My First Choice
Monday. This morning I ordered my stoma supplies with my delivery company and my prescription with my GP. By next week I’ll be organising and putting away another months worth of supplies to get me through August. August. My stoma was created three years ago this August. The day before my partners birthday – we celebrated my ‘new’ chapter and his life. I was always very comfortable with my stoma.…
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Life Lately | Surgical & IBD Update
Let’s catch up, shall we? I haven’t done a ‘Life Lately‘ posts since I was having my wound dressed each day. That feels like forever ago but it has only been a matter on weeks. So, let’s catch up on everything medical that’s happened since my Vedolizumab at the end of May. A general overview of June can be found here. The whole of June can be split into two camps…