Welcome to the Ulcerative Colitis Vlog! After dealing with ulcerative colitis for a year and a half, I started this site to describe every aspect of living with colitis, living with an ileostomy, and living with a j-pouch. If you have any questions at all feel free to contact me!
Support Camp Oasis!
Help me bring money back to next summer’s camp! It’s a cause that’s definitely worth supporting!
Hey everybody, I’ve got a new video here for the Translation Project, the two-part video on how to change an ostomy appliance. This video is my second most popular so it’s great that the Spanish-speaking world can now understand it.
Thanks once again to Martin for translating this video.
If you want to get involved with the project, send me an email telling me which languages you are proficient in and we’ll go from there. Upcoming are more videos translated into Catalan, and hopefully German as well.
Keep fighting,
~Dennis
The weekly blog entry on C3Life.com is now available for your reading pleasure.
I also want to welcome any new visitors to the UCVlog from C3Life.com. The first batch of my videos is now rebroadcast on this site, and a personal story overviewing my struggle with ulcerative colitis is also available. For my new visitors I hope you find information on this site that is useful to you! As always, should you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to email me.
To my faithful viewers, the videos on C3Life are ones you’ve seen before, but maybe now is the time to check out C3Life.com for more information about living with an ostomy. They have much more resources and information about ostomies than I do, so if you are at that stage of the journey, I highly recommend this site to you.
As always, keep fighting,
~Dennis
The Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America has decided that November is Get Gutsy Month. This is an ongoing project by the CCFC to raise awareness about Crohn’s and colitis, and to recognize individuals who have the guts to live in spite of their diseases.
If you’re a Canadian who knows somebody who lives passionately in spite of IBD, consider nominating them for the Gutsiest Canadian Award.
All throughout the month chapters of CCFC are holding education symposia and fundraising events, so there’s no reason not to get involved.
They’ve also produced this video highlighting Canadians with IBD, particularly a young boy and hockey player Fernando Pisani.
Keep fighting,
~Dennis
How do you avoid thinking about this incurable and debilitating disease? Is it even possible? With flare-ups, medicine, hospital visits, and everything else that comes with having inflammatory bowel disease, it’s hard not to have this disease constantly on your mind.
Keep fighting,
~Dennis
Sometimes Garfield Minus Garfield says it best. Some days with our diseases just don’t turn out as we expect.
Keep fighting,
~Dennis
New blog entry up on C3Life.com. This one’s about a sight that utterly disgusted me last week, one I partially shared with you already, and why that’s okay. It’s about ostomies, and everybody’s is different.
Keep fighting,
~Dennis
What exactly is going on in this Garfield Minus Garfield comic? It seems to me that Jon has had an accident in bed.
I’ve been there before.
Keep fighting,
~Dennis
The folks over at Living with UC, which is really just a corporate site for Remicade, have a new advertisement they’ve been airing on TV. Maybe you’ve seen it. It features hockey player Fernando Pisani talking about ulcerative colitis.
I like Pisani and think he helps out the IBD community a lot, but one thing I found funny about this ad is the symptoms of ulcerative colitis that they list. The only symptoms mentioned are: fatigue, abdominal pain, and weight loss.
Really? Those symptoms are pretty general. They left out my favorite symptom–bloody, urgent, frequent, and uncontrollable diarrhea!
Maybe saying it like that doesn’t make for a catchy ad.
Keep fighting,
~Dennis
The video about my first pouchoscopy attempt is finally available! A pouchoscopy, for those who don’t know, is a procedure for people with J-pouches. It’s like a colonoscopy in that the doctor can check out the overall health of the pouch plus take any biopsies needed to check for cancer or other diseases.
My first pouchoscopy didn’t exactly go as planned.
Keep fighting,
~Dennis
Question: Have you had a pouchoscopy? How did it go? Reply to this post for all to see!
I recently met a man on YouTube who has uploaded 10 videos about how to care for a prolapsed stoma. If you don’t know what a prolapsed stoma is, you’re in for a treat. Sometimes, in his case, when surgery is done very quickly and in emergency situations, the stoma doesn’t get secured as well. Over time, the stoma can unfold on itself, or “telescope” out. Think of taking a sock off your foot so that it’s inside out. John had a loop ileostomy that does just that, and from both sides. So the producing end telescopes out a few inches, and the nonproducing end telescopes out nearly eight inches.
In this video series John shows how he changes his ostomy appliance. He does it a little differently than I did. First, he lies down when he changes it, and second, he stays lying down for nearly two hours to ensure a good seal. I’m not sure if this is necessary but that’s the routine he goes through.
I’m not embedding the videos directly because I’m not sure how long they will remain unflagged. If you are in for something gross, check out videos 6 & 7. In video 6 John takes off his appliance and shows the world his prolapsed stoma. And in video 7, John pushes his prolapsed intestine back inside his abdomen. It’s truly disgusting and I like I said these two videos will surely be flagged (meaning you need a YouTube account that says you are over 18 to watch them). I was even disturbed watching this process. But it’s also very enlightening about the kinds of stoma complications there are in this world.
John tells me the prolapsed stoma isn’t a serious medical problem, and since he’s having his takedown surgery in roughly five months, the surgeon is just leaving it for now.
Keep fighting,
~Dennis
