Debra's 180 Medical Community Story

TRANSCRIPT

In 2018, my husband and I had just gotten home from a 30-day trip around the country. I went in for a physical. My doctor did some bloodwork, and he said, "Oh, you've got too much calcium in your blood."

So he prescribed medication—a diuretic for me—and I took it for a couple of days. But I got really sick. I called him, and he told me to make an appointment with an endocrinologist and stop taking the medication.

A few days later, I felt better, so I decided to go for a walk. I got about half a block away from my house when I started feeling bad. I was hardly moving. I looked at my FitBit, and my heart rate was 165. I walked very slowly back to my house and called urgent care. They said, "You need to come here."

They were waiting for me. As soon as I arrived, they took me straight into a room. They sent me for a chest X-ray, then came running back in and said, "We're taking you for a CT scan."

When I got back to the room, the doctor came in and said, "Your colon is so big, it's underneath your diaphragm and pushing your left lung and heart to the right side of your body. We have to take you to surgery tonight for an exploratory procedure—we need to find out what's going on."

I said, "Well, it's a good thing you're telling me not to go home and come back in two weeks, because I probably wouldn't," and he replied, "And you would be dead."

When I woke up, I had tubes everywhere—every place you could have one—because they were trying to save my colon. That went on for six days.

On the sixth night, a doctor came in and said, "We have to remove your colon. It's getting bigger, and you will have an ostomy." I had only ever heard of a colostomy, so I really thought that’s what I was going to have.

The next day, when I woke up, I had an ileostomy. It was… quite a journey.

Maybe I gave the impression that everything was really easy. It’s easy now—very easy now. But there were days, especially during that nine-month period when I was going to the doctor twice a week, that I felt angry. I felt defeated. There was a little depression, I’m pretty sure. But I managed to get through it because I had my husband’s support, my kids’ support.

I'm okay the way I am. I am healthy. I know what I can eat, what I need to stay away from. And I change everything out about every four days.

I didn’t get a whole lot of help. The ostomy nurses came in while I was in the hospital and showed me what to do, but they changed it for me every time—so I never got a chance to do anything myself.

A woman who became my mentor and a really good friend told me where to order products. She said, "I use Convatec. Why don't you try them?"

I’ve found that the people I deal with at 180 Medical are very nice. They know what they’re doing. And because the products work so well, my three-month supply lasts me almost five months. I haven't had a leak in two years.

I used to change my appliance every other day—now, like I said, every four days. I’m very happy with the products. I really like the lubricating deodorants. They're good products, and I'll keep using 180 Medical as long as I need them.

I just think about people nowadays who believe they’d rather die than have an ostomy. That is so horrible to me because you can live with this. You can be married with this. You can work with this.

Sometimes life is messy. You know what? You just clean it up. So I clean it up when I need to. And… I'm good.