Hi

Hi there.
My name is Mark and I have decided to start this blog as a sort of diary of my life as I get through having an ileostomy. I was diagnosed with indeterminate colitis November 2006 after having stomach problems for a while and despite a lot of drugs including a human / mouse antibody drug called infliximab I have not got better. Colitis affects the lower intestine and is one of 2 conditions covered by the term IBD or inflammatory Bowel Disease, not to be confused with IBS or Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It is called indeterminate because it may be Crohns Disease but it is not possible at this point to give a definitive answer. So, as the songs says, 'The drugs don't work' so I need surgery to sort me out. You do not 'recover' from IBD, the best you can hope for is a remission, for some people this lasts for a few months, for others it lasts for the rest of their lives. I am not one of these people unfortunately!
I am going to have an ileostomy, an operation that will give my large intestine a chance to rest for a few months. In order to do this part of my small intestine is taken through a hole, or stoma, in my stomach and faeces are collected in a bag that is emptied when full or when convenient. This is a bit scary at the moment but I must say that hopefully this will give me some kind of life back as I have been stuck pretty much at home since November, the only major excursions being stays in hospital and 2 trips to Southampton University to my Open University tutorials. (I am studying a computer degree, currently studying a course about object oriented programming using Java. I have another blog going, not updated too often at the moment though, Can I learn to program Java?
I am using my 'dead time' to study but lately I have let things slip a bit, it is hard to study or do much at all when you are constantly running to the toilet and each day is the same as the one before and you know that the next day will be the same again! This is why I am glad that the surgery is going to happen. Just need to wait for my name to come to the top of the surgeons pile.
That will do for now, I will be updating this daily, as I wrote above, the idea is that this is going to be my diary of how life changes over the next few months so check back soon to see how things are going.
Bye for now
Mark