Amy

Everybody, meet Amy! She is 30 years old and is a Yorkshire girl. Amy has had Crohn’s Disease symptoms as long as she can remember but was diagnosed at age 7.

At the time, she was the third youngest in the country with Crohn’s Disease so IBD knowledge and how to treat it etc has come on a lot since then. Amy was diagnosed with Crohn’s of mainly the small bowel and was treated accordingly but unfortunately quite unsuccessfully until tests when she moved up to the adult clinic at aged 17 led to a re-diagnosis of Crohn’s of the colon, rectum & anus mainly.

After nearly 12 years of medications and treatments, Amy’s Crohn’s became so severe and unresponsive to treatment that she had to have surgery to give her her permanent ileostomy, Stacey Stoma, in 2011. Surgery was long and complex as a benign tumour the size of a watermelon was found attached to her colon and this left her within hours of her life. Surgeons said if the operation had been hours later, the chances of her being alive to tell the tale were very slim.

Surgery left Amy with what she likes to call a “warrior scar”, measuring about 6 inches down her stomach to the side of her belly button. She loves to share her body confidence journey with stoma surgery to hopefully help others to do the same and loves to help others out with IBD, stomas and their mental health especially. Amy is super partial to a vanilla latte or a pink gin and lemonade and loves greyhounds. She is engaged and works full time in stoma supportwear as a Social Media & Marketing Specialist, as well as being a part-time health blogger & running her Instagram account to help & educate others who decide to join her on her journey. She also loves clothes, her “ostomy fashion” posts & can often be found singing in her spare time (and when working too!)

Amy’s favourite saying is “you own your stoma bag, it doesn’t own you.”