*This was my first j-pouch dream. The ostomy dreams are over and now my body sends me different messages at night to get me to wake up.
I woke up in the middle of the night and emptied my j-pouch. I was at home and had been up several times during the night. I walked into the kitchen to get a drink of water when I looked out the patio door and saw two wolves. Even though it was the middle of the night it was fairly bright out. The wolves were black, the size of horses.
Fresh snow covered the ground. Near the trees and bushes were mats of dead, wet leaves, which the wolves readily ate. I opened the patio door and stepped outside, watching them.
The wolves climbed onto the deck and looked at me, cautiously. Slowly I went back inside.
I was utterly amazed that I found these wolves patrolling the backyard in the middle of the night. I thought to myself, “Because of my j-pouch, I’m the only one who gets up several times a night to go to the bathroom. I might as well use this time getting up to do something productive.”
I made a plan to look for these wolves every time I got up. I planned on recording them with my camera and feeding them sausage. My goal was to make friends with them so that one day I could pet them.
One of the most important tools in managing your ileostomy is the wonder drug Imodium (or other stool thickeners). They greatly assist in managing your output and have virtually no side effects (not with me, at least). It’s one of the few medicines in my struggle with colitis that actually did anything for me.
Someday I’ll make a video about using Imodium with a j-pouch, once I learn more about when to use the medicine with my j-pouch.
Keep fighting,
~Dennis
Question: Have you had any problems with using stool thickening medicine? Leave a reply below!
This is the only thing I’ll ever complain about, I promise. And that is, having to get up in the middle of the night to empty my ileostomy bag (back when I had an ileostomy). It was always accompanied by a fear of having a leaky bag whenever I woke up, so that was part of the complaint.
Now, you might be wondering if I still have this complaint now that I’m using my j-pouch, since, with my j-pouch, I still get up at least once most nights. But surprisingly, this doesn’t bother me, for two reasons: I never wake up with the fear of my j-pouch leaking, and it’s a lot faster, simpler, and cleaner to empty your j-pouch than it is to empty your ileostomy pouch.
Keep fighting,
~Dennis
Question: What are you like when you get up in the middle of the night to empty your ileostomy? Have you had any bad experiences? Leave a reply below!
*This is potentially the last ostomy dream I’ll ever have! Assuming I never have an ileostomy again, I have a theory that I’ll never have another dream about my ileostomy. I’ve been thinking a lot about these dreams and I think they are a way for the body to look out for itself. They were always a way for my body to tell me it was time to empty my pouch.
I had to empty my ostomy pouch and I was attending a large party of sorts. It was night and I was at a large mansion that was only one story high. People wore costumes and filled the backyard. I went inside to find a bathroom.
I found the bathroom but it was more like a locker room. Lots of men were walking around and showering. Most of the toilets had broken doors on them. So many people were in the bathroom that there were lines at every stall.
I went to a stall and saw only one guy standing there. The stall had no door and was missing one of the walls. The stall next to this one also was missing its door. A man was inside that stall as well. I approached the man just standing by the toilet.
“I have to use this toilet.”
“Okay,” he said.
I touched his shoulder and turned him as if he was a door, putting him where the wall between me and the other guy should have been. His back was to me and he started talking to the guy in the stall next to me as if they were good friends.
I sat down and opened up my bag. I looked between my legs and realized I was sitting on a very large dark brown leather recliner. A boy and his mother approached my stall and looked in.
“I can’t use this,” I told him. “Usually I empty my ostomy pouch into a toilet.”
“Here! We can help you!” the mother said.
I stood up and walked to the sinks next to the trashcans. The boy found a white garbage bag and opened it up.
“Empty the pouch into here,” he said.
I opened my pouch and emptied it into the bag. There was a lot of waste and it filled up most of the bag. When I was finished I started cleaning the bag and realized that my ostomy bag was completely gone! The boy had taken off the pouch and all I had left was the barrier. I pressed tissue against the stoma and started looking for the boy and his mother. Both had completely disappeared. I walked around the bathroom for a long time and couldn’t find them.
My experience the first four weeks with passing gas from my j-pouch. I don’t know if my explanation for why it is hard to pass gas is physically accurate or not but it makes sense to me. If anybody can confirm my theories or not let me know. Otherwise, for everybody else waiting for their takedown surgery, hopefully this video gives you a further sense of what it’s like living with a j-pouch.
Keep fighting,
~Dennis
Question: Are you able to pass gas with your j-pouch? If so, how long after your takedown surgery did it take to pass gas? Leave a reply below!
It’s very important to a lot of people to know how the j-pouch is working out. My first two weeks was a little rough but nothing I couldn’t handle. During my second two weeks my j-pouch improved dramatically. I’ve very blessed in this regard. Some people aren’t as lucky with how their j-pouches work out the first time they use them.
Keep fighting,
~Dennis
Question: How long did it take before you were satisfied with the functioning of your j-pouch? Leave a reply!
A patron of mine sent me this interesting news story from Mount Sinai Hospital in Canada. Some doctors have found tentative genetic differences in people with colitis compared to people without colitis. This is very new research so it doesn’t really mean much but it’s interesting to check out.
I’m not sure where genetics will go in the future or what I think of it yet, but rest assured, there will be much more research done in this area in the coming years.
If you come across any news stories relevant to colitis or Crohn’s, don’t be afraid to email me and I can post them for others to see.
This is the second-to-last ostomy dream I ever had.
*A real ostomy dream before waking up with a full pouch.
A couple friends and I were going to make some kind of chemical. It was supposed to be a cleaning product or organic product or something. But we didn’t have all the supplies to make it.
We went to an antique dealer and looked at his wares. He told us that usually people use a large metal container with multiple filters in it to make chemicals. But he had something better to sell us. He sold us a device that looked like a stripped down box spring. It was a metal frame the size of a double bed with a layer of metal springs and supports all across it. It was made completely out of metal. The man told us that the springs worked better as a filter for our chemical. So we bought it and carried it home.
We took it into our garage to clean it. Our garage was very small and messy and took up most of our small backyard. Our neighbor had built a fire in the fire ring in his backyard. He had a massive log three feet in diameter and seven feet long propped up in the pit. The flames were big and smoke crept into our garage, so we closed the doors.
We started cleaning up the metal frame when I realized that my ostomy pouch was full. I went into the house but somebody else was using the bathroom. I checked the other bathrooms but people were using those too! I went back to the garage and a few minutes later went into the house again but the same thing! Somebody was always using the bathroom.
Then I woke up and checked my pouch, but I didn’t have to empty it. Confused, I looked at the clock and realized only twenty minutes had passed since I first emptied my pouch this night.
A fun little video today about all the different colors your stool will turn once you get rid of your colon. It might sound like a strange topic, but the stool changes colors based on what you eat and other conditions.
My throbbing colon was part of my struggle with ulcerative colitis. Perhaps you know what I am talking about. It bothered me that it throbbed like this because I knew that wasn’t normal. And it was a constant reminder that I was sick. I don’t know if my colon did this because I was skinny or if because I was really that unwell.
Keep fighting,
~Dennis
Question: Did you have this problem with your colon? Leave a reply!
Many of us have ostomies only temporarily. And many people around the world are in need of supplies. So if you have any extra unused, new, and clean supplies, send them our way!
We are collecting supplies to send to Haiti with a medical team!
Current progress:
1114 bags and flanges
2108 medical supplies
