I have had an interesting week. Normally, my ostomy doesn’t give me much fuss. I usually change it about once a week. I rarely have leaks or any other incident. A lot of the time, I basically forget it’s even there. That was not the case this week.
I told you yesterday that I went to visit my surgeon due to some persistent pain in my stoma. He checked it over and told me just to keep an eye on, but he didn’t think there were any major issues I should worry about. So last night, I go about my day and that evening, I took one of those heat packs that you warm up in the microwave and you usually use for headaches, and put it across my stomach. I was hoping to relax the muscles and allow anything that may have been stuck to move along.
When I woke up this morning, I was still having some pain and I could just tell that my stoma felt a little weird. I looked at it through my bag and it seems to be coated with something, so I used some water to help clean it off, but it didn’t make any difference. I thought maybe something had hardened on it, so I decided to take off the bag and clean it with some wet wipes.
Well… when I did that, I saw that it was not coated with anything. It had actually turned gray. It was also swollen over the hole I had cut in my bag, so I could only assume that it had enlarged and the blood supply had been cut off, therefore, killing that part of my intestine. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to show you any gory pictures.) I’m thinking the only option is going to be to removed the end of my intestine and form a new stoma. So here comes panic time. I call Jarrod and tell him that I think my stoma is dead and I need to go to the emergency room. He was already on his way out of town, but my parents came to meet me and take me over to UNC. I did call my surgeon on the way over to say that I was going to the ER, but they told me to come up to the clinic and we could go from there.
I got over there to see him and told him what was going on. I took off my bag to let him take a look at it and gave me one of those, “Hmm… that’s unusual.” He examined it for a little bit and it started bleeding a lot. That made me nervous at first, but he reminded me that it’s actually a good thing. He said the intestine dies when there is no blood flowing to it and obviously I still had a good blood supply. He said he had never seen anything quite like this before.
So here’s what we believe may have happened: when he checked my stoma yesterday for issues, it caused a trauma and some bruising. We all know the remedy for swelling and bruising is cold, but I put heat on it, which I think must’ve exacerbated the problem. We’re still not exactly sure why it developed the sort of gray coloring on top. (Maybe that had something to do with the bruising, as well…?) But he thinks I’m going to be OK and this should sort itself out. Trust me, I am paying extra close attention to it and making note of any changes. Also making sure to chew my food extra-well right now.
This was a very bizarre week for me. I honestly spent several hours today thinking I was going to have to have another surgery and praying that wouldn’t be the case. I guess it worked.