Sarah's Crohn's Blog - Bowel Obstruction

Sarah’s Crohn’s Blog is a series of journal entries related to Sarah’s battle with Crohn’s Disease. She was initially diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in 2010, but since then the diagnosis has changed to Crohn’s Disease. Anything referring to ulcerative colitis in these blogs was simply written before the diagnosis changed.

October 13, 2020

I've been long overdue for a health update, and I was actually getting ready to write a "my life is great!" post, only for this to happen. I've been feeling under the weather for the past few days, and yesterday morning I developed some abdominal cramping suddenly out of the blue. It felt similar to when I have had obstructions in my stoma, and since all of those resolved on their own after a few hours of pain, I decided to wait this one out too. Unfortunately, the pain and nausea continued to get worse so I had no choice but to go to the ER. I had a CT scan, and sure enough I had a small bowel obstruction. The obstruction is right at my surgical site where they reconnected my intestines. The scar tissue there has caused the "plumbing" to narrow, making it easier for food to get stuck. I've been eating a ton of vegetables from our garden, and I may have overdone it with the spaghetti squash and borscht and stir fry delight.

The plan now is to get a sigmoidoscopy and dilate the stricture (which they can't do until tomorrow), so until then I'll be taking pain/nausea medicine and not eating any food. Other than this minor setback, I have been doing great. I am finally getting back to work at the urgent care on a per diem basis which is a huge deal for me. Although I can only handle a few hours at a time, it is nice to get my feet back in the water, and my coworkers have been so supportive and amazing! I'm also working out more and getting stronger by the day. The only thing really bothering me is extreme fatigue, but I give myself lots of time to rest and recover when I need to. I think this obstruction is just going to be a minor setback and I will be back on track in no time!