Colorectal Surgery – Page 3 – Own Your Crohn's

Ableism, acceptance, advocacy, awareness, Body Positivity, colorectal cancer, Colorectal Surgery, coping with flares, Crohn's, living with IBD, Ostomy, Ostomy Awareness Day, Self-image, stigma, Ulcerative Colitis

The Beauty of Ostomates Worldwide

October 17, 2019

Happy #OstomyOctober, everyone! After doing a piece about things we can do with an ostomy last year, it only seemed appropriate this year to highlight how diverse the population living with all types of ostomies is. Just to backtrack, many of you might be wondering what an ostomy is. According to the United Ostomy Associations of America (UOAA), “ostomy surgery is a life-saving procedure that allows bodily waste to pass through a surgically created stoma on the abdomen into a prosthetic known as a ‘pouch’ or ‘ostomy bag’ on the outside of the body.” There are generally three types of ostomies: (1) colostomy, (2) ileostomy and (3) urostomy. A colostomy takes a resected…

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Tina Aswani Omprakash

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My Feature in Suffering the Silence’s Photo Series Campaign

October 6, 2019

Originally Published in The Mighty on October 2nd, 2019: https://themighty.com/2019/10/suffering-the-silence-chronic-illness-photo-series/ “I was diagnosed 13.5 years ago but I feel like for a long time I kept it quiet. It’s so deeply stigmatized in American culture. Crohn’s being a bowel disease makes it very difficult to talk about. It has to do with something that nobody talks about. It’s so debilitating. A lot of times it’s mistaken for an eating disorder because our weight can be all over the place so nobody wants to ask us what’s going on because they’re ashamed to. We want to be asked how we’re feeling. Since I became an advocate, more and more people are…

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Tina Aswani Omprakash

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My Ostomy, My Lifesaver

October 3, 2019

In honor of National Ostomy Awareness Day, blogger Tina Aswani Omprakash shares her journey with an ostomy and how she broke through the taboos she faced. By Tina Aswani Omprakash Originally published in Everyday Health on October 2, 2019: https://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/my-health-story/one-woman-shares-her-gratitude-on-world-ostomy-day/ I woke up from surgery feeling like someone had taken a hammer to my stomach. The strong smell of antiseptic assaulted my nose as I struggled to take in breaths of air. I cracked my eyes open and looked around my white hospital room. My nurse and her aide pulled back the curtain separating me from my roommate and I lay motionless as they transferred me from a stretcher to…

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Tina Aswani Omprakash

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~OYC Trailblazers~ Mollie’s Story: Living la Vida Latina with Ulcerative Colitis & an Ostomy

September 27, 2019

By Mollie Tinnin My journey with chronic illness began my senior year of high school after a violent assault left me hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. At the time, I received eight units of blood and during the treatment of the injuries I had sustained, the physicians discovered I had ulcers in my intestines. The treatment of both these injuries and my ulcerative colitis have been complicated in that they both are intertwined and affect each other even until this day. I’ve tried several medications, such as Mesalamine, but with the scar tissue and the ulcers both being in the same location, medication has not been very effective for me. Surgically,…

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Tina Aswani Omprakash

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~OYC TRAILBLAZERS~ Katie’s Story: Baby-Making Prospects & Egg-Freezing with a J-Pouch

September 4, 2019

A Nursing Student Tells OYC Her J-Pouch Story and How That Led to Her Courageous Decision to Freeze Her Eggs to Someday Have Children. By Katie Gene Friedman When I was first diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in my senior year of college, my colitis responded to medication and didn’t take up much of my life. Consequently, I only disclosed my diagnosis to my then boyfriend, best friend, and immediate family. During a bad flare and particularly stressful semester in grad school studying social psychology, that group expanded to include the nucleus of my social circle and some professors. At that point, my disease affected what I was doing but not…

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Tina Aswani Omprakash

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Pelvic Pain in IBD: An Overlooked Complication

August 9, 2019

By Tina Aswani Omprakash, Medically Reviewed by Jenny Blair, MD Originally Published by Oshi Health, Inc., on August 8th, 2019 A complication of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that often goes unaddressed and misdiagnosed is chronic pelvic pain (CPP). CPP is often defined as pain in the pelvic area that isn’t cyclic and isn’t related to pregnancy and that lasts for three to six months. It may affect from 6% to 25% of reproductive-age women, depending on how it’s defined, as well as men and older women. The condition can arise from a variety of causes. How I’ve Experienced Pelvic Pain So how does CPP apply to us as IBD patients?…

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Tina Aswani Omprakash

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~OYC Trailblazers~ Mollie’s Story: Living la Vida Latina with Ulcerative Colitis & an Ostomy
September 27, 2019
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Love Knows No Disability

July 2, 2019

Nine years ago today, the love of my life, Anand, and I were married in a beautiful Hindu temple with several of our relatives and friends in attendance from all over the world. It was a momentous occasion for me not just in a traditional sense but because of how close I had been to death just two years prior. But as beautiful as the wedding was, the process of getting married wasn’t exactly a fairytale or a bed of roses. You see, a couple years prior, I was freed of an extremely warped and diseased colon on the 4th of July, 2008 (see blog post: My Very Own Independence…

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Tina Aswani Omprakash

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World PTSD Day 2019: The Faceless Woman

June 27, 2019

In honor of World PTSD Day today, I release a poem I wrote some weeks ago surrounding the medical trauma I’ve faced as a Crohn’s patient. This poem is not for the faint of heart so I will not be offended if you cannot read it. Post-traumatic stress is a term that’s often thrown around lightly but it has serious implications for people who have been in battle for their country, for their lives and against chronic illnesses. Everyday is a minefield with an array of flashbacks and memories that keep us from living our best lives. I urge you all to learn more and to respond to those who…

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Tina Aswani Omprakash

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In the Name of Science & Research

June 25, 2019

Traveling home from Mayo was beyond excruciating– horrible abdominal cramping and nausea/vomiting as I could barely walk. After all the testing I had had (4 testing procedures, an ER visit, multiple appts all in 5 days) and my Stelara trough levels coming back as borderline, it was no surprise that my Crohn’s Disease had flared. I was in a frenzy and knew I had to act fast. Within an hour of landing, my local GI and I came up with a plan to admit me at my local hospital. She asked me to consider enrolling in the POWER clinical research study in which she would reinduce me with a megadose…

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Tina Aswani Omprakash

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J-Pouch Failure – Tina’s Story

June 15, 2019

Originally published by Amber of Colitis Ninja on June 12, 2019: https://colitisninja.com/2019/06/j-pouch-failure-tinas-story/ J-POUCH TAKEDOWN ANNIVERSARY Next month is my 5 year takedown anniversary for my j-pouch. I have stated many times that the j-pouch has a 94-96% success rate. But you don’t hear many success stories on the internet because most of them are out there living their lives and not boasting about it on the internet. Because you don’t hear a majority of the success stories out there, I feel compelled to keep sharing my own story of life with a j-pouch. SUCCESS & FAILURE STORIES I have given a lot of thought to how I would address this year’s takedown anniversary. I thought…

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Tina Aswani Omprakash

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