A Belated, But Much Needed Update.

So, earlier this month, I went and spoke to my colorectal surgeons who gave me the green light to have reversal surgery. I signed the papers that evening and the next day, I received a call to say that I am officially on the waiting list. . Some people who I have talked to are still a bit confused as to what my first surgery actually entailed, (and rightly so, its definitely not a simple procedure). So I am going to try and explain what happened with very shittily drawn, not to scale, and definitely not anatomically correct drawings to try and explain better.

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Pictured below, is what a relatively normal person's digestive system would be composed of:

Food goes in your mouth, down your oesophagus, into your stomach, through your small intestine, around your large intestine, and then out your anus via your rectum.

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My problems all occurred in my large intestine, so when I went in for surgery, they removed it. The surgeons also connected the end of my small intestine to my anus. .

They then used a higher part of my small intestine and cut it kind of like this:

they cut it almost all the way through, but left some in-tact and then diverted it through the side of my stomach.

. So now my insides look something like this:

One end is attached to my stomach end of my intestines, while the other is attached to my rectum.

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In very basic terms: I eat, my food gets digested by my stomach and partially by my small intestine, it then passes out the opening (stoma) into the bag that I wear on my stomach. Because my rectum is still connected to my anus, I do still occasionally pass mucous out my anus and sometimes some overflow fecal matter, but most of the stoma's output goes into the bag.

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My new problem is: is because of the blood vessels that hold the intestines together, my stoma couldn't be brought out as far as it should have been, and I get output leaking directly onto my skin, causing painful burning (which hurts because stomach acid is not meant to be outside of the lower digestive tract).

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This next "reversal" surgery will essentially be what i have drawn below:

The surgeons will sew up the two halves of my exposed intestine and return it inside my body, and then sew up the opening. This will thankfully be a lot smaller surgery with a greatly shorter recovery time. After this surgery, I will go back to using the toilet like a normal human, and I wont have to wear a bag. My output will be watery and loose but its not much different to what I've had for the past 12 years, but without the constant inflammation going on in my body, hopefully with less pain and less fatigue.

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But this will be happening in the next month or so, I have all my fingers crossed that this is going to fix things (finally) so I can get on with living my life.