![]() ![]() To date we’ve trained 350 UK nurses and many more around the world. #Best place to write blog about stoma professionalRead the reviews here.ĭuring this time I continued to work with ConvaTec as a consultant and we developed an innovative nurse training course and the me+recovery training programme for patients.įor the first time patients could access professional advice on rehabilitation after stoma surgery and nurses could attend an RCN accredited (the only one of it’s kind in the world) course to teach them about abdominal exercises and safe activity for their patients. That’s all I wanted and it makes me really happy to be able to help others. Not only that but nurses and doctors have given it rave reviews and recommend it to their patients. I hoped that people would find it comforting, useful and helpful. Waiting for the first reviews on Amazon is utterly nerve wracking. Let me tell you, if you’ve never published a book, it’s a terrifying process. The Bowel Cancer Recovery Toolkit was finally published. It turned out writing a book is quite hard. I contacted Hammersmith Health Books who took it on without a moments hesitation and then patiently waited whilst I wrote and re-wrote the book. I was working with a colorectal cancer patient (who was a keen runner and triathlete) and wanted to find an inspiring book for her to read about returning to exercise. I then trained in cancer rehabilitation to add to my MSc in sport/exercise science and 20 years of fitness rehabilitation qualifications. I started working with ConvaTec as their global exercise specialist and through our research in the UK, found that people who had their stoma due to cancer were reluctant to return to exercise and had very low levels of physical activity. Despite my best efforts this hasn’t changed much, and we are still very much scratching the surface. To date I’ve completed 37 marathons and have just run a 50 mile ultra-marathon in the UK.īut in doing so realised there was a huge gap in patient support, nurse/surgeon education and knowledge about rehabilitation and exercise after stoma surgery. I managed to rehabilitate myself, get fit, retrain my abdominal muscles and return to running, cycling and the life I loved. Lying frail in my hospital bed I asked about exercise, abdominal rehabilitation and whether I could run and do sports again now I had a stoma. The surgeries floored me and I remember wondering if I would ever be able to go cycling or running ever again. I had 2 young children and was a competitive athlete at the time. I underwent 5 major operations over 18 months and it would be fair to say it was a difficult time. In most cases stoma surgery is life saving and life changing, and that was certainly true for me. I went through abdominal surgery to remove my bowel and have a stoma formed, after suffering a life-threatening bowel perforation. ![]() ![]() Here’s the timeline of how I went from ‘patient’ to ‘global expert’… 11 years ago ![]() Life really does take an incredible path sometimes. And if someone had told me that 10 years later I would have a book translated into Chinese and I would be training ostomy nurses in China on Zoom, I would never have believed them. Over a decade has passed since I had my own stoma surgery. Blog post written by Sarah Russell, author of The Bowel Cancer Recovery Toolkit. ![]()
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