- Ugh, this is weird. This is weird. How do I start this? Don't let the makeup deceive you, it makes me look a lot healthier than I actually am and feel. Here's what happened. You may or you may not have noticed, but I have not uploaded
any videos in a while. And there is good reason for that. I have spent the last
four weeks in hospital. I have or had ulcerative colitis, which I have spoken about before. But I recently had the worst flare up, that I have ever had of it. And I had to have surgery. So I had my colon removed. And I now have a stoma,
which is basically, part of my small intestine,
sticking out of my body, and then a stoma bag on it, and I poo into a bag, so. That's me, that's my new life. Now the rest of this video is me just gonna be talking about what happened. Oh god. So I'm home now, I'm back
in my flat in London. I've been here for three nights? I absolutely love being home. It is really good for my brain, in this recovery, I'm exhausted a lot. I've lost a lot of weight. I don't have a lot of strength. I walk like an old lady. But I'm doing okay. And I'm gonna get better. Okay, let's start from the top. I started getting the
abdominal cramp symptoms around the beginning of November. At the start I would just get a cramp, it would be really painful
and I would just kinda have to breathe through
it and it would pass, and that happened like
maybe a few times a day. Throughout November, the pains
kind of got worse and worse. I didn't do anything
about it at first because at the end of October
I got the coil put in. And so I thought that those
pains were coil related. But then, after a while,
I realised that if it was anything to do with my uterus, the pains that I get there are usually like a constant pain and like a dull ache, whereas these were like contractions, because they would come and go
and they were quite intense. So like end of November,
was when I was like, hmmm, this might be colitis, so I
called up my specialist nurse at the hospital I'm
registered at in London. And she was like okay come
in to the outpatients clinic, and we'll do a stool
sample and a blood test. But I was going to New York,
so it had to be pushed back. So it was the 12th of
December that I went in to see the nurse and do the
samples and the blood test. A few days later she called
me up with the results and confirmed that the disease was active. And the 15th of December was
the first time I got diarrhoea, and the 16th was the
first time that I vomited, and it just goes downhill. At this point when I'm having the pains, I'm still normal Hannah, normal energy, normal appetite, all of those things. But by mid December, the pains are bad, like when I get one it
lasts a really long time, I have to completely stop what I'm doing, and I scrunch up my face,
and I have to breathe. So yeah, the 15th 16th is when
the other symptoms started coming along, and then
on the 18th of December, that was the first day I felt ill. I woke up and I was like,
oh, I feel horrendous. I think it was once the
vomiting symptoms started, that I lost my appetite. I just couldn't eat, or anything
that I did manage to eat just came right back up again. During this whole
escapade, I kept track of how much I was shitting and vomiting, because it's good for the doctors to know, so they can track if it's
getting worse or improving, duh duh duh duh, and so
this is my poo diary. At it's worst I was going to
the toilet 13 times a day. Because my test came back saying yes, there is some inflammation, my nurse prescribed me some enemas. Cause basically ulcerative
colitis, ulcer-a-tive, it's ulcers in your intestine. So you got ulcers in your mouth, you put some bonjella
on it and it soothes it, so this is effectively that. I did two days of enema, and then, on the 20th, of December, I had a flexible sigmoidoscopy. Which, is basically a small colonoscopy, where they put a camera up your bum. And oh boy I wish they'd
given me sedative, cause it was so painful. What happened was is they saw nothing. They saw no signs of the disease. At that point I wanted to
be admitted into hospital. I knew it was colitis, but
they saw nothing in my colon, and, sent me home saying
that it was probably just a gastric infection. My nurse did say, if the symptoms persist, I should go to A and E. So Friday, the 22nd of December, me and Dan, my boyfriend, go to A and E. We were in A and E for about eight hours. Then, Saturday the 23rd of December, was officially the beginning
of the Christmas travels. So somehow I managed to get
on a train to Northampton which is where Dan's dad lives. And I feel horrendous, and awful. Christmas Eve, Dan
drives us to my granny's where I'm spending
Christmas with my family. I feel horrendous, I spend pretty much all of Christmas day in bed, or on the toilet. I still haven't celebrated Christmas yet. Like, I need my 2017 Christmas. Is this a fun depressing story? Do we need a break? Look poo emoji! Yeah! Boxing day morning, we
drove back to Northampton, but we drove straight to the hospital, and went to A and E. The doctor there was like,
it's not a gastric infection. You have a history of ulcerative colitis, you have ulcerative colitis,
here are some steroids. At this point I'm just
getting worse and worse, like I'm not getting better. Friday, the 29th of December, we go back to A and E, and I get admitted. Having to be in hospital is awful, but at this point I was
just like confirmation, like somebody believes me. At this point my parents
are there as well, so my parents are incredible people, I spent four weeks exactly in hospital. Again, missed New Years
Eve, so it's not 2018 yet. It is not. So I spent two nights
on an assessment ward. And then they moved me to the gastro ward, and I had my own room. Now, here's the thing, this
might be the saddest bit, I don't know, that room to me, makes me think of death. And genuinely once I've
recovered a bit more, I'm gonna get therapy,
because I need to process the events that happened
in that room properly. I do not want to develop any kind of PTSD, because I feel like that could happen. I was a shell of a person. I was not me. I couldn't talk to
people, my voice was weak. I spent most of my time
just lying on the bed with my eyes closed, not really sleeping. I wasn't eating except for the one thing that I managed to eat was
cheese and onion crisps, Walkers, please sponsor me because these things kept me alive. I was not me when I was in that room. My phone didn't have any signal, but that didn't really
matter because I had no urges to even look at my phone. So treatment wise, they put
me straight on IV steroids. There is bruising all up
my arms and on my legs from needles, blood tests,
cannulas, injections, everything. None of that was working I
was having regular blood tests and they were tracking my CRP, which is my inflammation marker, and it was really high. Then they decided to put me on
this drug called Infliximab, which is an infusion, so it
gets put into your veins over, I think it was like, two hours. When I was 15 that was
the last flare up I had, and that was horrendous,
and nothing was working, and Infliximab was a really
new drug at the time, and they gave me
Infliximab, and it cured me. And it was like this miracle drug. So I think me and my parents were kind of expecting that to happen again. No. The Infliximab did not work this time. And so then a week later
with no improvement in my symptoms or in my blood,
we tried a different infusion drug called Visiluzimab,
cause this is 10 years later and there's so many more drugs. And as you can guess, that
also didn't work, yay. The disease was starting to
affect the rest of my body, which is when they start to worry. At this point at well, I'd
gotten an appetite back, and I was keeping the food down, I hadn't vomited. But I got this fever, and my
appetite completely went again. That day was the first day
that we had any conversations with surgeons, and started kind of, not making any decisions, but, talking to the surgeons about what surgery would entail, and what life after surgery would be. I met the stoma nurse, they're
a specialist stoma nurses. And she explained about the bags, and how it all works,
and she got a sharpie pen and drew on my stomach
where the stoma would be so I could kind of get
used to having to look at what that might be like. On Friday we made the
decision to see how I am over the weekend and do another
colonoscopy on the Monday to see visually, if my colon had changed. On the Saturday night, the
nurse comes in to do my observations and turns out
I have a rocket high fever, and I don't feel like I have a fever. She called the doctor and the doctor came and I was just like I feel fine. Not fine, but I don't
feel like I have a fever. But then on the Saturday night, the fever that I didn't feel night, in the night there was two,
and then Sunday morning one, so three trips to the toilet. If your squirmish, just
don't listen to this bit. But those three trips to the toilet were just a waterfall of blood. That's the only way I can describe it. Just a lot of blood. So then when we saw the
doctor the next morning and they did a blood test, and the results came back and then, the surgeons came in, and, that was it. Decision made. At this point I was just like
get this colon out of me. Get my bowel out of me. My parents were there, Dan was
there, my sister was there, so when I signed the consent
form for the surgery, that was the first time that
I'd written 2018 as a date. After I'd signed it, and the
moment all of the surgeons left the room, my mumum, just broke into tears. I don't know what kind of tears they were. I was relieved I think,
but scared, I don't know. Surgery was risky, because
they don't like to do surgery on you if you have a fuck-ton
of steroids in your body because it increases
your risk of infection. Everything after that
happened quite quickly because we were told that I
wouldn't have surgery until about four o'clock which
was in a few hours time. But then they decided it was an emergency, and just were like, nope let's do it now. I got whisked off to the
theatre, and got put under. So this was Sunday the 14th of January. When I woke up from the
surgery I was in so much pain, oh my god, and I got wheeled
to the intensive care unit where my parents and my sister,
and Dan were waiting for me. The surgeons say that it
was good, colon is out. One thing I do remember,
cause I was high as a kite at this point, they asked
if I had any questions, and I asked, if I could see my colon, I don't know, I just wanted to see it. And I was like do you have any photos? They didn't, I've not seen it. I still kind of wanna see it. So in ICU, it is one nurse to one patient. So the nurse is just there, constantly. And I was just talking to him all night. I remember being like, do you
feel empowered as a nurse? And why do male nurses and female nurses have different uniforms? The next morning, some physios came, and they tried to get me out of bed. Oh my god! So I stook up and crab
walked to the side a bit, and then got straight back into bed. I was told that I needed
to try and move my legs and lift my bum off the bed
whilst I was lying in it, and I struggled, I just
spent one night on ICU, and then I got whisked
off to another ward, where I was a level one patient. Which mean that it was one
nurse to three patients. So this is when recovery begins. That first day after
surgery I felt amazing, relatively amazing, because
I was high as a kite, I was chatting away to
my parents and to Dan, and it was the first time in weeks that I'd been able to hold
a conversation with them and I was in a lot of pain,
I couldn't really move, still on loads of meds
and all of this stuff, but not having that
diseased colon inside of me was incredible. Dan had taken a couple days off work, so he was still in Northampton
at the hospital with me. Tuesday I felt so sick. And I was vomiting up lots
of green stomach bile. This is very normal after any kind of abdominal surgery apparently,
you're small intestine does not like being handled apparently. So nothing was going into my bowel, nothing was getting absorbed, so, what they had to do was put
an NG tube inside of me. Ah, another tube. I think at one point I had nine tubes. So the NG tube goes up your nose, down the back of your throat,
and into your stomach, which collects all of the bile. Sometimes it comes out itself, so there were a few times
I sat there like this, and I can see just green
gunk, coming out my nose. It was revolting, but also fascinating. But also, every four hours,
I had to have it aspirated. And that was also at night. So it's literally every four hours. What that means, there's like
an attachment on the tube where it attaches to the bag,
and then they take that off and then they get a massive syringe, and they basically just use
the syringe to pull it out. And you know those
bedpan sick bucket things that hospitals have? I would fill up like one or two of those, every four hours, of stomach bile. This is disgusting, I'm so sorry. So I had the NG tube, and
whilst I had the NG tube, not allowed to eat, and at
this point, I had an appetite. Anytime I saw anyone else
with food on the ward, I was like waaah I wanna eat that. I had a morphine dream about
face planting into some rice. But that wasn't allowed
because I had the NG tube and I have to wait until
the stoma started working. I can't remember how long
it took, maybe a day or two. But the stoma started working. At the beginning, she was very loud. (farting noises) Oh I've named her Mona, by the way. Once Mona actually started working, they then put a bung in the tube, so it wasn't free flowing out of my nose. At this point, I was on soft food. So I was eating yoghourts and jellies. Then I had the NG tube out, and was allowed to start eating
a little bit more things. Like mashed potato, egg
mayo sandwich, soft foods. My diet now, is so weird. I can't have high fibre stuff. So I have to eat like
white bread, white rice, white pasta, I'm not allowed
greens, no green vegetables. I'm allowed root vegetables but all of the skin has to be off. I'm allowed fruit but
skins have to be off. No nuts or dried fruit cause
that can cause blockages. It's also my ideal diet basically. Just starch and meat. This diet is for the
first six to eight weeks that you have a stoma, and then you're allowed to start reintroducing small amounts of the other things. So we'll see. I'll start eating peas again soon. I'm seeing the physio every day, and walking a bit further every day. I would go for one walk
like up and down the ward, and I would spend the
rest of my time in bed, very static, very still, and then also with the physios
I had to start practising doing stairs because I
live in a top floor flat, and there's a lot of stairs. I am incredibly weak. I have a huge scar down my tummy. And so I have like no ab muscles at all. Which means that walking around and standing up for long periods of time, my lower back really hurts
because it's overcompensating. Basically slowly but surely, one by one, the various tubes all came out of me. I got discharged on Friday
the 26th of January, four weeks after being admitted. And I've now been in my flat. Yesterday I went for
a walk around the park that's at the end of my road. I'm getting better at the stairs, I can make my own lunch
and make my own breakfast. I've changed the bag by myself twice, and I have a big pillow set up in bed cause I can't lie flat still. I can't stand up straight
and I can't lie flat. I'm basically just trying
to fatten myself up now because I don't fit
into any of my clothes. If you watch the Hormone
Diaries you'll know that over the last year and a half I gained loads of weight
and had to throw out loads of my old clothes and I
threw out all of my old bras. And I don't want to buy any new clothes because I really shouldn't be this weight, this is way too skinny for
me, this is not healthy. Another thing that I've noticed is that writing is really hard for me, my hand is really shaky,
I can't write very well. I still have the stitches around my stoma. It's still healing. The stoma itself has no nerve endings. So you can touch that and not feel it. But it's the bit where
it's attaching to the skin where there are nerve endings. Still under house arrest,
hoping to go to my local pub at some point that's like my next mission. So since the surgery because
I was feeling so much better because I didn't have that
bloody disease anymore, I was using my phone a lot more. And been on social media, and turns out, a lot of other people also have stomas. What's the word? Am I am ostomate? I've seen that word being thrown around. I need to learn I need to
learn about this community. I wanna make a lot more
content about this stuff and about my recovery
and about how I'm dealing with having a stoma and... Apparently there's like, companies that do cool lingerie
for stomas, and stuff? But yeah, shout out to any of you guys who also have stomas or
any kind of ostomy bag. Thank you so much for all
of your get well soons and stuff on Twitter and Instagram. You've all been so so so so kind. Thanks to my parents
for just being amazing. And looking after me, even
though I'm their 25 year old baby thanks to my boyfriend
Dan for also being amazing and not leaving me, just thank you. Also thanks to Alison who was the IBD, inflammatory bowel
disease, specialist nurse at Northampton hospital,
she was incredible. And just there the whole time. So so so so lovely. Oh, one more thing one more thing. So one of the things
that Alison did for me, was she got hold of the
histology report of my colon. So after they took the colon out of me they sent it to a lab so they
could basically have a look at it and just be like where's
the disease what's going on? So she came to visit
me on the ward one day, with the histology report, and, it was all in medical jargon, but she translated it for us. It basically said that it was
severe ulcerative colitis, confirmed, and the inflammation was in the middle two quarters of the bowel. So the middle half. Which would explain why my London hospital didn't see inflammation when
they only went in a little bit. It means that the bits
that are left inside of me like my small intestine
and my rectum are safe. The histology report
confirmed that it is in fact ulcerative colitis, and
the ulcerative colitis has now been taken out of me. The other thing that the
histology report said was that may appendix appears obliterated. I'm not a doctor, I didn't
realise that your appendix was attached to your large intestine. But the disease had completely
destroyed my appendix and the surgeons failed
to tell me that they'd also removed my appendix,
so, that's gone too. Two birds one stone. It's good to be back. See how I'm much happier
now, talking about this part of the journey than I was at
the beginning of this video when I was talking about the horrific bit. I need to process that part. Okay let's just end this,
this video's probably like half an hour long I've no idea. Thanks for watching. Thanks for sticking around. I'll make another video
when I feel like it. So there you go. In the meantime follow me
on Twitter and Instagram because there's loads of
chat about stomas and poo. Alright, bye.
