Numb Stomach
I was warned before my surgery that I might have a numb spot on my stomach afterward. I wasn’t too worried about it, especially with how I was feeling, and since I figured the feeling would come back eventually.
It’s now been approximately four months since my surgery. Everything else is pretty well healed up and I am able to do what I want. But there’s still a numb spot below my stoma on the “inside” part of my stomach, meaning between my belly button and the stoma. I guess if you were to take the six pack of stomach muscles (yea, wishing there since I haven’t even started exercising again yet!), I guess you would say the “inside” half of the bottom right one is numb (about a one-two inch square area). It feels sort of like your mouth feels after having your gums numbed for some dental work. It doesn’t hurt, and I can definitely still sense things there, but no real “feeling”. The sensations I can get are probably from surrounding nerves and the changes in other things, like the position of my ostomy bag or shirt, when I’m touched there.
Oh well. I can’t say that I ever really noticed feelings there before, so it’s not really much of a loss. But it is one of the small differences in living with an ileoostomy. And I can’t imagine it would even get better if I decided to get “put back together” since the nerves are already severed.
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