Learning to run again

Rome 2007, a limping Roger sweats his way around the Coliseum accompanied by The Marchioness of Basford and Sherwood.

It is now about 5 or 6 weeks since a masked man in green pyjamas cut me in half. I am feeling a lot more like the old me now. I have more energy and I have got used to the new plumbing.

One of the strange side effects of having colitis has been that my leg joints have been really painful at times. Sometimes it meant that I lurched slightly in the street, and being quite large and bewhiskered, people would cross the road in case I asked them for money.

At times I've had to use a walking stick, and I have been rendered virtually immobile. Some UC patients will have experience of Infliximab which I was on before the surgery. Apart from playing around with my immune system it also gave me a few weeks pain free walking before I would slowly seize up again.

I used to run a lot, many years ago now I admit. I used to casually run 10 miles without a thought. Then I got the Ulcerative Colitis and running didn't seem like such a good idea. It shook my guts, and as time progressed hurt my ankles and knees. So then I used to go to a gym and grunt on the machines there before swimming a lot of lengths - (100).

I was going to the gym right up to the day before I went into hospital to meet the masked man. Now, after the operation, my legs don't hurt me anymore. I can walk with ease.

One cold night last week I was coming back from a pub, and I took it into my head to combat the cold by running. So I started to run and despite still looking a little frightening to other pedestrians (not wearing running gear you see) it was not too painful.

So a few days later I set off to run round a large park area of Nottingham called The Forest. It was cold morning and my eyes and nose and ears were cold.

I started to run very slowly the length of The Forest. It was a bit odd, I seemed to have leaden legs and I ran out of breath pretty quickly. All around me were athletic people gliding by at speed almost as if riding bicycles whilst I trailed along at petty pace gasping for breath. Some of them slips of girls that ran like whippets, some of them big muscular men in football gear nonchalantly trotting past me like horses.

Today I had another go. This time I had planned to walk for a bit, run for a bit, walk for a bit, run etc. I started by going for a walk up a hilly road to warm and loosen the legs, then on the flat I began an inelegant run. I managed to keep it up for about three minutes (That really is bad) then I walked for about the same amount of time. I repeated the walk run routine for about 30 minutes.

My knees and ankles have become very weak, and going down hill I fear that my knees will give way.

IT DOESN'T MATTER! I'm running. Just a little bit, just a step at a time.

I will run again.

My "Stoma Buddy"

The bed I was in at Queens Medical Centre earlier in 2009.

I had been given the number of someone who had been through the operation that I could ring and ask questions. My "Stoma Buddy" as my wife referred to him.

It was with some trepidation that I rang, as it's not usual to discuss the minutiae of personal plumbing with someone you have never met; however one thing that UC can help you with, is coming to terms with yourself and your bodily condition. So I rang the number.

A busy and positive voice answered the phone. The first thing he said was that I could ask him anything I wanted, and he reassured me that there was nothing that could embarrass him.

His story, in brief, was that he had had Ulcerative Colitis from 1987 - 2004; and as he said (and as I have discovered over the last 12 years), you can adapt to anything.

During his time with UC he was not really in pain most of the time, such is the case with me. Nevertheless he developed a load of coping strategies. Just as I have done; just as anyone with such a disease will do.

In 2004 it all came to a head for him, and he was admitted to hospital where he was administered to for 2 weeks. Then the consultant (my consultant as well) said it was really time for him to have the op. He was in a very bad way, and he had no choice. I, at least, am not in an immediately bad way; I'm not in pain, and I have got a kind of choice.

He described how the consultant waited with him for the ambulance to take him to the hospital where the op would take place. He spoke with great admiration of how she looked after him, administering the Temazepam at just the right moment. I tried to imagine her doing that.

So my "Stoma Buddy" had no chance to prepare himself physically or psychologically for the operation, as I have.

He said something very interesting about forums and researching Ulcerative Colitis. The trouble was, as far as he could see, that the forums were dominated by the same questions and the same problems, and these were mainly negative. He felt it was shame that there were very few positive experiences of hospitals, doctors and surgery described on these forums.

He was offered a choice of anaesthetics, but of course he didn't know what was best, so he asked the anaesthetist what he recommended. Epidural was the choice, so he took that. Afterwards he was on morphine with some kind of pump that he could control himself to give pain relief.

Recovery, he said, in his experience consisted of about three horrible days, and then you feel better. However he developed a hole in his stomach - a fissure - and this meant that he spent more time recovering.

But he also said that after the operation he felt amazing, and felt as if he could run a marathon.

Life with a bag, he says, has its problems. Learning to accept it is the most difficult thing, he felt that everyone was looking at him all the time, and that it was difficult to be intimate with his wife. He had a few accidental leaks, and sometimes a bag would come off. But this was solved as he got more used to dealing with and using the bag. Cutting the hole in the neck of the bag the right size seemed to be crucial (2mm wrong and it could be a problem). He would always have a towel on the floor when he was showering as he could easily spring a leak and he talked about it taking about 45 minutes a day to get sorted and dressed.

He has since had a pouch constructed, and now feels absolutely fine.