I am in a predicament I have had two VAFFT surgeries in London, and although my consultant there said it might take a few to help, I was sceptical. After all it has been eight years living with the damn fistula. He made sure I understood that they were not a cure but a chance of an easier life, if they didn’t help at all then I would need another flap surgery using the other thigh muscle and bum cheek. I really want to avoid that if I can. There have been times throughout those years when the fistula would seemingly heal for a time, but it would ALWAYS come back. You get fed up constan ..read more

  Last week I was at St Marks hospital in London having VAAFT surgery and this is how it went. ( video assisted anal fistula treatment, although I don’t have an anus it works in a similar way for my particular anatomy and infection.) Click on the word VAAFT in paragraph above for a detailed description of the procedure. We were hoping and praying they didn’t cancel at the last moment because we had to go down the evening before and stay in a hotel ( I had to be there at 7am.) It would have been a nightmare and costly. I was a bit nervous about this surgery as it was a new hospital for me ..read more

Hello again, sorry it has been a while but there wasn’t much to report, but this month has been a busy one. We went to Corfu and it was brilliant, we really needed the break and we chose a beautiful part of Corfu called Arillas. My stoma behaved remarkably, and I felt confident enough to have a dip in the pool. I bought a lovely bikini from Bravissimo.   I knew that when I returned I would be seeing a consultant at St Marks hospital, which is a hospital specifically for bowel/pelvic issues. My own consultant at home said I would most likely need a massive surgery with muscle from my tum ..read more

  A few weeks ago I started getting a bit of tummy ache with nausea after my evening meal ( it honestly wasn’t my cooking), this was on and off until earlier this week. I had made a yummy shepherds pie but with swede mash, my plate was completely empty it was that nice. I went to bed and can’t remember if I had that weird tummy ache thing again, but anyway I went to sleep. I kept waking in the night with quite painful colicky spasms, but tried to manage some sleep. When daylight came I had a look in my bag and the stoma was swollen and I had very little output. Usually I have a fullish b ..read more

When I had my original stoma surgery I never dreamed I would be in this position nearly 8 years later. After the IGAM flap surgery I thought that might be it with the big surgeries, but it seems not. I have been informed that I have a pelvic collection 4cm x 5cm that links to the back wall of my vagina creating a large hole that the infection has created. I don’t really have a back wall at all now now. The collection then passes out my vagina. Things have now changed slightly, as I discovered last Thursday, a new hole has opened up in my flap scar ( where my rectum etc used to be) and I now l ..read more

  We went to Rome with some friends. It was a fabulous place and although super hot, the places we went were astoundingly beautiful. I have been once before when we were on a cruise, but we only stopped for a day and managed the Vatican with St Peter’s square, the Basilica and the Sistine chapel. This time we got all the main places in those three days. The evenings were wonderful with great company, great food and of course, drinks.   During that previous week and onwards I have had a lot of bother from the vaginal fistula draining. With it being hot and having to wear pads, it w ..read more

  THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN JUST BEFORE I WS TAKEN DOWN TO SURGERY 7 YEARS AGO. Crohns & Colitis awareness week has always been a week full of awareness on social media. I think it is so important to talk about it, as anyone with bowel issues will understand. Poo and all things related to poo hasn’t always been talked about until recently. When I was first diagnosed over 30 years ago it was a very different story. I didn’t have a clue what was happening to my body. I was a teenager enjoying life when all of a sudden ( yes it was that quick ) I found myself in hospital with a young doctor ..read more

    Fistulas are bloody awful, and not only that, the medical profession struggle to control them. Not only that, patients have no support whatsoever as to living with a fistula ( or two in my case) we are expected to live our lives for months to years with a draining fistula. I am usually a very upbeat person but these last few weeks are getting me down. It’s also one of those things that is difficult to explain. I have tried in previous blog posts but fistulas and sinus tracts are quite the enigma and even when I google about one of mine, there isn’t much there. Many surgeries late ..read more

  I have had another surgery. This one was so that my new surgeon could examine me under general anaesthetic through the vaginal hole into the pelvic infection, and see what is really happening in there and also flush it out to give me a few days leakage grace, we hope. I  got there at 7am as per letter and I waited a little while before being called. After observations were done I met the anaesthetist, and we had a chat and he said if I wanted to, I could probably be awake and have a spinal block as it wasn’t a big operation in my terms of past surgeries. We checked with my surgeon ..read more

This post is on the A Bigger Life website .     I have had a small bowel MRI before I had my ileostomy, but this was slightly different to what I remember. They gave me some scrubs to wear which were throw away ones and a bag for my items. I still had to drink this mixture, but I have to admit it wasn’t nearly as awful to drink this time. It was almost water but with a tinge of something, maybe like a shot of bowel prep. I had a canula placed so that they could give me the contrast. I chatted to the nurses who were also very lovely and when I went outside the room to wait I heard on ..read more