I dont mind sharing at all. If what I writes helps other, I'm super happy to do it.
I had a total colectomy in the middle of 2009. Prior to that I had lived with Ulcerative Colitis for roughly 8 or 9 years. UC essentially robbed me of my 20's. Being scared of the idea of having an ostomy, I tried every remedy to keep my UC in check. One day my colon ruptured. Its frankly a miracle that I survived. I woke up after surgery with a loop ileostomy. The plan was to wait until I was healthier and then have 2 more surgeries. One to create a J-Pouch, and a final one to eliminate the Ostomy. Well, 2 years and a handful of surgeries later, the J-Pouch just never healed properly. It ended up creating a Fistula. Eventually I was told that my Ulcerative Colitis diagnosis was being modified to Indeterminite Colitis; since they basically couldnt actually tell if I had UC or Chrohns. Had my original diagnosis been Chrohns, they never would have done the J-Pouch. And of course in hindsight, I wish they wouldnt have. It only created new problems. At that point I had lived with my ostomy for 2 years, and finally got used to the idea of living with it forever. I had a final surgery to remove all the j-pouch remants, and convert he loop ileostomy to an end ileostomy. I will live with that for the rest of my life. And all I can say is its the best thing I've ever done
I was always a very active person growing up. Even in my 20's I was active whenever I wasnt sick. The ostomy gave me back every bit of my life that I had robbed of me. Since then I have added on an Instrument Rating to my pilots license. I have travelled to Europe 3 times. I've gone skydiving, dirt bike riding, mountain bike riding, dog sledding, snowboarding, jet skiing, flowing gliders, flown planes. You name it, and I've probably done it. And as many of you probably realized, I did a significant amount of Scuba Diving. I earned my Open Water, Advanced Open Water, and Rescue certifications. I was about half way through Divemaster when I ended up moving to a new home. That new home was far enough away from the ocean that I pretty much gave up on diving. So I am no longer an active diver. But I can assure you I did plenty of it while living with an ostomy. In fact my fistula only finally decided to pack up and disapear just a year ago. So I dove while even having an active fistula. My all time favorite dive was doing the Corsair in Honolulu. Thats at 110' of water. So you can rest assured that diving is not a problem with an ostomy. At one point I had spotted an article from Divers Alert Network where they were reaching out to Ostomates to understand their experience with diving. I contacted them, and they never replied. I was a bit disheartened by that, because I very much wanted to share my story with them. I would think it would be of great interest. Hell my original post here has garnered dozens of personal emails from people asking me about my experience. You body is mostly water. Even an unaltered body has a couple of openings. You already know you can dive fine without an ostomy. Adding one more opening doesnt change anything.
An ostomy is not a death sentence. I've yet to find something I cant do while living with one. I'm planning to visit Antarctica in the next couple of years. I recently moved up to Ventura and have taken back up Surfing, which I do regularly. And I have also started Paragliding. I hold down a very good job as a Network Engineer. Most people do not know I have an ostomy unless I tell them. I dont go announcing it, but I also dont really care if people know. You cant even visually tell that I have one.
These three videos were all taken within the last 6 months. Hopefully it assures others looking at the prospect of an ostomy will realize its nothing to be scared of:
As always, I welcome people to contact me. Even though I'm open about what I've gone through, many are fighting their own personal battle. I'm always happy to offer words of wisdom and support.
john@beyondvoip.net.
