I’ve Been Blocked

With an ileostomy, there have been times that the foods I've eaten during the day didn't digest quite as well as I would have liked.  There would be noticeable stomach discomfort, sometimes categorized as pain.  But I would go to bed and hope for the best.  I'd be uncomfortable until I finally fell asleep.  And the next morning I'd wake up as if nothing had ever bothered me the night before.

However, last Thursday, my experience was different.  I try to watch my carbohydrate consumption as I have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS).  This makes my risk of diabetes greater.  I enjoy eating almonds and uncooked produce like mushrooms and broccoli with hummus.  Normally these things don't bother me.  But Thursday, they did.  I ate a snack bar loaded with almonds.  A couple of hours later, I ate broccoli and mushrooms (in a larger quantity than I usually do) with the hummus.  And then a few hours later at supper, I had a small salad.  That's when the pain began.

Now, initially, I didn't give it much thought.  I just thought it was just discomfort and it'd pass.  The problem was, there was something inside of my small intestines that didn't want to pass.  Or rather it did, but couldn't.  As the evening wore on, the pain only worsened.  I had to go lay down trying to massage the area where my stoma is to help provide some relief.  My husband had to take care of our son for the rest of the evening on his own.   With his busy schedule, I was thankful he was available to do so.

I went on to bed in quite a bit of pain but just assumed that the next day would be better.  And it was as far as I was concerned.  I didn't feel 100%, but better than the agony of the night before.  I decided to keep my diet light (although maybe not light enough) and have a smoothie for breakfast, peanut butter sandwich for lunch, and chicken and sweet potato for supper.  I was still rather uncomfortable on Friday night.  And it was time for me to put on a new ostomy bag.  That's when I finally noticed how swollen my stoma was; golf ball size maybe.  Way larger than I can recall seeing it.  And the area around it was very sore.  I didn't think the new wafer would stay on through the night because of how swollen the stoma was and how watery my output had gotten by this point.

The next morning, I woke up still in one piece.  Feeling a little better pain wise, but emotionally I was a nervous wreck.  I was scared with the stoma being so swollen and the output still so thin.  And my weight had quickly dropped to the lowest I have seen it in quite some time.  I put a call in for the on-call doctor at my gastroenterology clinic to make sure that what I was doing was okay (consuming a mostly liquid diet and some low residue foods like crackers).  He thought that was fine.  He didn't think there was much else to be done besides a wait and see approach and repetitively said to go to the ER if things got worse.  He mentioned the possible return of Crohn's and maybe even an infection as the cause of my issues.  I thought that strange as I mentioned what I ate.  I still felt that was the cause, so with an expert mentioning the word Crohn's, that made me a little more nervous than I already was.

The next day, I added a little more food to my diet.  I made it okay.  The output started to get better.  The soreness around my stoma was still there and is still there even now, but very, very minimal.  Today, I can say the output is MY normal.  I have incorporated cooked produce back into my diet without issue.  But I have yet to try another salad, although I think I'm ready to.  And I'm ready to try fresh produce again.  I'm just going to make sure and CHEW thoroughly and watch my portion sizes.  The almonds and peanuts...yea, I don't know that those will be back in my diet so easily.  That snack bar is where I really feel like my problems were honestly.  I actually put some peanuts in my food processor and made my own peanut butter.  It was something I had been wanting to try.  And I liked the results although I'd imagine most people wouldn't as I didn't add any sweeteners to it.  Next, I want to try making my own almond butter.