Venezia

Firenze

Roma

    

Italy has been one of the favourite countries on our list to visit for a very long time, and this year we finally made it :)

We started in Rome, then Florence and finally Venice, with a quick visit to Padova. There were so much we wanted to see in Rome that it felt like the 3 days we spent there were experienced in a hurry in order to do everything we wanted. Nevertheless Rome is beautiful and welcoming and the people are the nicest.

Pouchitis

When I was ill with Ulcerative Colitis, and then when I went through surgery, living with an ileostomy and deciding whether an internal pouch was the right option for me or not, I wandered a lot around the net to find more and more information about what I was going through. Reading about other people's experiences helped me a lot through the bad times and make up my mind when it came to surgery decisions. I also realised that IBD, ostomies and internal pouches are still a bit of a taboo and people in general have very misconceived ideas about them and maybe that’s why it is so hard for patients to accept what happens to them. So, when I started this blog, I had in mind to talk about Ulcerative Colitis, ostomies and internal pouches in an attempt to create awareness, but then after surgery things went so well, fortunately, that in the end there wasn’t really anything to talk about, which was amazing of course. 

Until now.

As I mentioned on my last post I was on a two-week holiday. I went to Portugal, to spend some time with my family and friends and also had a trip to Italy planned to go with my sisters. The trip to Italy went well until the last couple of days when I started feeling very tired, nauseous and going to the loo a lot more often. I got back to my parents' in Portugal and the symptoms didn’t get any better. I thought that it could may be Pouchitis but I was told the symptoms didn’t match up. After a visit to the doctor and exams done, Pouchitis was confirmed. The days I thought of spending at the beach were instead spent at home, mostly in bed on a very strict and boring diet. I have been on antibiotics since last week but still not quite there yet. I managed to get myself back to the UK (what an awful journey that was) but work will have to wait until I get back to my usual self.

Pouchitis has always been one of my worst fears of living with an internal pouch, I guess mainly because of being in some ways similar to Ulcerative Colitis. It makes me feel like this will never really end and in some ways it’s true.

For those that don’t know, Pouchitis is inflammation of the ileal pouch and is usually treated with antibiotics. It seems that between 15% to 50% of patients will get at least one bout of pouchitis in their lives, so it’s not that surprising that I got it.

So for now I’ll be home nauseous and weak and losing more and more weight until the antibiotics work their magic, and fingers crossed this is the only bout of pouchitis I get :)