- Joined
- Sep 22, 2011
- Messages
- 6
Hello all, this is my first post to the forum. I am a 24 year old female who is in my 5th week of recovery from a small bowel resection and temporary ileostomy. I first begain having trouble with Crohn's in March of 2010. Often having severe abdominal pains and after some time losing 30 pounds when I was already a petite 110 to begin with. I went months going between emergency room visits and visits to my family doctor. When I would see my doctor he would just continually prescribe me lortab, and would occasionally say, "sounds like you have Crohn's, " which I had never heard of and he for some reason never ran any tests nor referred me to a GI. And from March to December I was having to go to the ER practically every two weeks always getting sent home with the same response, "eh it's just your stomach ulcers, take some prevacid and go home." Which made me angry because I thought, if it was my ulcers, why am I hurting in my lower right abdomen and near my kidney and why does it hurt so bad that I can barely function. Finally in December I was admitted and seen by a GI who did a colonoscopy and diagnosed me with Crohn's. For a few months I was taking prednisone and pentasa and that seemed to be working fine. I even gained my weight back plus a few pounds. But soon the flare ups and frequency increased and the pain was even more excruciating than before. I was admitted to the hospital where in late July 2011 I did a three week stint, with TPN, antibiotics, and steroids. The pain got worse so the consulting surgeon sent me to ICU where I spent a day and had a tube inserted through my nose. I really hated that tube. The surgeon didn't feel confident operating himself so had me transferred to a bigger hospital 2 hours away where a surgeon was on staff who dealt specifically with digestive problems. Did about two weeks or so there. They waited a few days and decided to do the surgery on August 17, 2011. I had a portion of my ileum removed. I was told that I had an abcess full of pus, which was like causing my increase in pain, a lot of damage, and a tear that had apparently healed on it's own since I had gone so much time without treatment, the surgeon said she was surprised I was able to go so long without the surgery, so aparently the tear was pretty bad. I am currently in week 5 of my recovery. Took a bit of time getting used to the bag, and experienced mild irritation around my stoma, but overall doing well. I'n fact, my surgeon has scheduled me for a CT scan next month and depending on how it looks I can be reconnected. I'm a bit nervous, but am so ready to return to some semblance of normal daily life without the ostomy bag. :ycool:
