stigma – Page 3 – Own Your Crohn's

acceptance, advocacy, awareness, Body Positivity, Colorectal Surgery, Crohn's, Dating & Relationships, Gratitude, living with IBD, Ostomy, Ostomy Awareness Day, Self-image, stigma, Ulcerative Colitis

Ostomy Awareness Day: Empowering Ostomates to Live Fuller Lives

November 22, 2019

Last month, Amber Wallace Ogle of Ostomy Diaries & I got together with Hollister, Inc. (a major ostomy manufacturer) to bring our audiences a discussion on how to lead a fuller life with an ostomy. Our aim was to engage viewers from around the world who may be struggling with self-image, body image, family life and relationships with an ostomy. And it was a grand success! We reached nearly 1,500 viewers from over 46 countries and from the feedback received, it was a video that helped many. Here’s to many more conversations like this where we can help ostomates feel less like outcasts and more like the beautiful human beings…

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Tina Aswani Omprakash

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The Healio Disruptive Innovator Award: Moving the Needle on IBD Care

November 16, 2019

A few weeks ago on Diwali Day, I won the Healio Disruptive Innovator Award for the Patient Voice category at the American College of Gastroenterology’s conference in San Antonio, Texas! This award is presented to the patient advocate who helps move the needle on GI care most in a particular year and whose voice resonates most with the 200 world-renowned doctors part of Healio Gastroenterology. Even though I wasn’t able to travel to Texas for the award ceremony, I’m deeply honored and humbled to be recognized with such a prestigious award. It has been a very long and arduous journey and being able to advocate and help destigmatize inflammatory bowel…

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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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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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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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~OYC Trailblazers~ Harman’s Story from India

July 10, 2019

By Harman Singh Randhawa My battle with ulcerative colitis began in 2003. I was 20 years old and in my 2nd year of studying Engineering. By the time the diagnosis came through, I had already lived with pain and inordinate trips to bathroom for more than 6 months. Ignoring my painful symptoms and the discomfort that came with it, I kept delaying getting a thorough checkup. I started experiencing bloody diarrhea for many days. Finally, it was my sister who decided that the situation had gotten out of hand and drove me to PGI Hospital in Chandigarh in Punjab, India. I underwent a few tests and when the blood test…

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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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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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