First prolapse

Hey all,

sorry it’s been a while, times just flown by! I’ve been doing lots and nothing haha but today’s post I really just wanted to focus on one thing. Prolapse.
So I have experienced my first prolapse, and my days, it was very scary! It was a few weeks back and I had had a busy few days, first time with my hula hoop class, followed by a very physically heavy and hard day at work, and then on the Saturday I was at a party and busting some kick ass moves, with one hell of a lot of hip movements. Suddenly I check my bag with my hand, as I often do to see how full it is and think “Right I best pop to the toilet and empty”. I’d had a slight stomach ache which I thought was down to a stitch from all the dancing. Well in the toilet I try to empty nothing is coming out. Suddenly it dawns on me as I’m feeling through the bag that whatever it is filling my bag up was coming from my stoma.  I felt my heart beat speed up and my stomach turn and I felt around a bit more. “My stoma has come out!” I realised it was my intestine that was out in my bag, and tried to stay calm and gathered as I left the bathroom and went over to Axel to tell him. His immediate reaction was “Shall we go to the hospital now?!” He was so worried, and shortly followed it up with  “Is it really bad? Have you had a look?” In all honesty I don’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I didn’t want to rush off to the hospital just yet, and I knew for sure that I definitely would NOT be able to take my bag off and look, I think I would have frozen completely! So I told him I was gonna go find a quiet room and lay down and rest and do some research and I’d tell him if I felt worse. I found a quiet room with a sofa which I laid down on, put my feet up high and just tried to calm myself. I did some google research, which I know is the worst thing to do when something is wrong but this time it helped, it took my mind off things and everything result that said something awful I just though “Oh well it’s definitely not that!” Bloody good job I had that attitude because god knows what state I would have got into otherwise! After having laid there for a good 15 minutes I dared to feel my bag and realised it didn’t feel as full anymore, it felt more like normal. So I carefully got up, my stomach was quite sore, and went to an upstairs toilet which wasn’t as in use so I could calmly take my bag off and have a look. Even though I felt like it had gone back to normal I felt that it was important to see how things looked in case my stoma had changed colour or something. Luckily when I took my bag off everything looked fine and just like normal, which meant I could finally breath out, put on a new bag and tell Axel the news. I was still a bit sore the rest of the night and kept feeling my bag to see how things were, but I was very pleased when I could enjoy the rest pf the party in peace. The following day I was very cautious and kept an eye on my stoma, again I was still a bit sore but nothing more than that.
I knew I was seeing my stoma nurse the following Friday and therefore thought that I wouldn’t call her unless it happened again before seeing her.

Friday came and I told my stoma nurse everything. She looked at me smiling and said “Yes, that was indeed a prolapse, and you handled it just perfectly! You did the right thing laying down and taking it easy, calming down. And for future references you can put something cold on your stoma, or run cold water on it to help the blood vessels reduce in size to help reduce the swelling. If it still hasn’t gone in after a while then you can lay down and gently help ‘massage’ it back in with some cold and wet compress.”  She also told me my skin and stoma looked really nice, which was one of the best compliments I’ve heard in ages! It’s so strange how any other compliment is hard to accept, but one regarding my Stevie the Stoma makes me feel so proud!

So I have had my first prolapse and handled it perfectly, and I now feel prepared if it is to happen again. For those of you who don’t know or haven’t caught on to what a prolapse is, it is when the small intestine slips out of the stoma making the stoma a lot longer than it should be. I got told it isn’t something dangerous and I shouldn’t worry, they don’t usually preform surgery to prevent it or stop it happening, its just a case of helping it back in with fingers if needs must (however I’m not sure how great I’d be at doing that myself). Yes it can happen again, but I now have the knowledge to deal with it and I feel mentally prepared for the possibility of it happening again, however I hope that it never will. My plan to help prevent it is to always wear a girdle when doing heavy lifting or tough activities and to try to keep my stomach muscles tones… it’s a plan at least, how much I will succeed in it is another question hahaha

 

In the picture below my fingers are showing roughly how much of my intestine was hanging out in my bag. It was one very very VERY creepy experience!