An Engineer, Inventor, and Innovator

I would never want to return to the painful days before my ileostomy. Though the surgery has changed my life for the better, there were challenges along the way. For me, gas and ballooning was all too frequent and it almost stopped me from living my life. As a systems engineer by trade and an innovator at heart I realized I had the ability to take control of the situation. My creativity and engineering skills went into overdrive and I dove headfirst into developing a device to solve the problems I was having. Before too long, I had developed my first ostomy accessory. The Ostoh Valve System has given me the freedom to live my life the way I want to, on my own terms.

My Story

The year I graduated college and started my first full time job I had my first small bowel obstruction. It was the most painful thing I ever experience and it came out of nowhere. When surgery was over I thought the situation was behind me but this became just the first of countless pseudo small bowel obstructions. Over the following 12 years I was hospitalized too many times to count, had 6 surgeries, spent untold days in pain on the floor of the bathroom or in bed, and missed too many events with family, friends, and work.

I spent years trying to manage the issue with diet, medication, and tests. Ultimately a surgery and biopsy in 2018 gave me a diagnosis of dismotility due to some nerve damage in my intestines. My GI felt that a particular medication given by pills or (or IV if in the hospital for another obstruction) would work well for my situation.

Then in 2019 I was hospitalized for one of the worst obstructions I had experienced. I was in tremendous pain and eventually the GI and surgeon said I should get an ileostomy to fix the issue. I fought them on it, telling them I wanted to wait it out. I wanted my intestines to start up again on their own. I pushed on for 20 days or so, when surgeon and I had a bit of a heart to heart talk about my situation, followed by another talk with my GI. I realized it wasn’t getting better and my pain was so high, that I relented and said OKAY to the ostomy.

I didn’t know what I was getting into, I never really thought this would be a thing that would happen to me. It wasn’t something I wanted, I had even tried all the diets and medications and tests over the years to ensure it wouldn’t happen. Ultimately it did happen; and it is okay.

My life is so much better and more controlled than it was before the surgery. Except for the gas and ballooning. It almost stopped me from having a life after the ostomy. At the time, I didn’t know how I was going to get back to a normal life if I had to burp my bag the “traditional” way all the time. That’s when I realized I could create my own ostomy accessories to make my life easier.

That eventually blossomed into Ostoh and I have been working on the Ostoh Valve System and other ostomy accessories ever since.

I never thought my life would include creating a medical device, but life has a weird way of pushing you where you need to go.