Stories from fellow ostomates across Australia and New Zealand.
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Surfing with an ileostomy bag – PART ONE
I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at just 7 years of age. Initially I was diagnosed with giardia, however my symptoms continued to get worse, therefore I was referred to a gastroenterologist in Brisbane. After further investigation I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. It was difficult to understand and what this meant for my future. Some
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The Magic Bag
My fifteen-month-old son Harry is fascinated by my ostomy bag. He crawls across to me while I’m eating, reading or otherwise relaxing, grins impishly and whips up my T-shirt like a magician unveiling a trick: ta da! He still doesn’t quite know what to make of it. His eyes fill with wonder and then look
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A matter of life or death
January 2019, I was 24 years old and was on a month-long trip around South-East Asia. Towards the start of my trip I had noticed some of my IBD symptoms coming back after being in remission for 7 years, I didn’t think much of it and made a mental note to see my gastroenterologist when
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Learning to love life again
I started experiencing my first symptoms about a year out of school. I’ve always been a perfectionist and an over-achiever, and I suffer from an extreme fear of missing out, so I was really frustrated when I started experiencing what I thought was just a case of persistent and unrelenting gastro. I was in my
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Rosanne meets Fred
My story begins many, many years ago. I was born in New Zealand, a small town called Waipawa, in the Central Hawkes Bay area of the North Island in 1934. My health issues began in 1976, about three months after I married my husband of 40 years. I was diagnosed with cervical cancer and had
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Changing the stigma for young ostomates
Justan is a health coach and ostomy awareness extraordinaire. At just 30 years old, Justan has become the face & heart of the colostomy community. Endlessly crusading awareness of all things gut-related, Justan wants to transform how everyday Aussies think about their health and their colons. And Justan knows a thing of two about colons.
Where to next….
