The United Colon Vlog

Hey everybody, everything continues to go well with me today. Last night was my first night out of the hospital and it felt great. I slept very, very well, from about 9:45 pm to 8:45 am this morning. And no nurses woke me up at all! I had a roommate in the hospital this time, and my second (and last night) in the hospital, he was vomiting and coughing and farting all night. The nurses kept coming in and they left the bedroom door open and the lights were on and off all night. Needless to say, that night I didn’t get much sleep. But it’s okay, he needed help. He was an 82 year old man who just had a kidney removed.

Nothing much planned for today, just walking around a little to get my strength back. The skin around my scar is really dry and peeling so I’ll put a lot of lotion on it today. To continue with my tracking:

Yesterday’s Stool Count: 11 times during the day, zero during the night.

Now, 11 times sounds like a lot but it really wasn’t that bad. There was never any urgency. And 11 times is quite a lot less than 20 times a day, as I’ve heard some people experience when they first start using their j-pouch. And you have to remember, I just started eating food yesterday. In a couple weeks I’ll do an overview video about stool frequency to give you a better idea about what this stage of recovery is like.

For this week, I have more great videos for you. I have a video about showering with an ileostomy and the second video in my “Losing Control” series.

Continue to send me your comments and questions as I don’t have much to do these days and would love to answer your emails. Let me know where you’re at in your battle with colitis, let me know if you’re in the hospital, let me know any questions you have.

And keep telling your friends about this vlog. Even if your friends don’t have colitis or Crohn’s, but you do, they might find this site useful. It can be hard to explain sometimes what it’s like living with inflammatory bowel diseases, so why not have me explain to them the stuff you might have a hard time talking about?

Keep fighting,

-Dennis

News Story: Occasionally I look for online news stories about ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, or primary sclerosing cholangitis. There’s not much out there. But I did find a nice story today from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about a son who donated part of his liver to his mother who had PSC.