Ulcerative colitis, surgery and a stoma: Ant’s life with a bag
His long road from diagnosis to purpose.
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Ulcerative colitis rarely announces itself with clarity. For Ant, it struck in 2008, during his first year at university, long before social media offered visibility to people living with inflammatory bowel disease.
Instagram did not exist. TikTok was, as he jokes, “just the noise your clock made on the wall.” There were no creators openly talking about stomas, no reels explaining urgency or blockages, no public reassurance that life could continue after surgery.
Instead, Ant was facing diarrhea, urgency and blood.
“I remember just sitting there being like, this isn’t normal,” Ant says. “Every time I go to the bathroom, this is not great.” The frequency escalated quickly. What started as a few concerning trips became ten, then fifteen times a day. With it came fear. “I remember feeling really worried, really quite frightened, like something’s not right.”
Back and forth
Like many young people, Ant was initially reassured that nothing serious was happening. University doctors and pharmacists suggested over-the-counter medication. It was probably just a diet thing. Stress. Alcohol. Student life. Ant believed them, at least at first. But the symptoms didn’t ease. They intensified.
When he returned home for Christmas and saw his local physician, months had passed. Stool samples were taken. Tests were run. Ant was told nothing was wrong.
“That was the bit for me that just didn’t make any sense,” he says. “You can clearly see something’s wrong. I know I’m in pain. I’m passing blood. This can’t be normal.”
The advice he received was disheartening. Adjust his diet. Wait it out. A referral to a specialist was certainly possible, but it could take a while to be seen. Fortunately, Ant had insurance and chose to go private. A colonoscopy followed quickly, and the answer was immediate.
“They were like, yeah, you’ve got severe ulcerative colitis,” he says. “And I was like, cool. What’s that?”
At nineteen, Ant didn’t yet understand the weight of what he was being told. His doctor prescribed him steroids to calm the inflammation. Long-term medication would follow. Ant accepted it casually, with the invincibility that often comes with youth.
“I just saw it as, yeah, fine, whatever,” he says. “I didn’t really take on the enormity of it all. I thought chronic just meant more painful than acute.”
Ant’s IBD diagnosis did not stop him from trying to live like everyone else. His university studies continued. Lectures. Exams. Social life. He learned quickly how to mask his symptoms, even when they humiliated him.
“I was with friends, and I shat myself a couple of times,” he says. “I’d just be like, sorry guys, I’m gonna go.” There was no drama in the telling. Just adaptation and survival. But during exam periods, Ant’s colitis flares intensified. His pain was constant. His sleep fragmented. And still, he showed up.
“I remember just being like, I can’t do my exam tomorrow. I’m in so much pain,” he says. “But I always figured I’d be all right. I’ve just got to navigate this moment.”
That mindset carried him through the next eleven years. From 2008 to 2020, Ant moved steadily up the medication ladder. Mesalazine brought long stretches of remission at first. He took one pill a day, and life felt manageable again.
“I remember going to the toilet and having a normal shit,” he says. “I even texted my family and my mates. Best feeling ever.”
But remission never held permanently. Ant had to fall back on steroids, and his dosages were constantly adjusted. Then came azathioprine, a drug he remembers being told was also used for organ transplant patients.
Side effects started piling up. His doctor started him on cyclosporine, and that eventually caused tremors so severe his hands started shaking during meetings. His hair began falling out. His eyes burned with dryness. Even playing golf became difficult.
“I was swinging my club and my dad was like, are you all right? Your hands are shaking,” he says. “And I was like, it’s these drugs. They’re awful.”
Time to make a change
When the medical talk turned to additional treatments bordering on chemotherapy, Ant reached a breaking point. “What’s the point?” he asked his consultant. “The solution is to get rid of the colon. Then I don’t have to live like this.”
Surgery, however, wasn’t immediate. He was not sick enough to make the top of the urgency list. Initial estimates of a few months stretched into more than a year. Surgeries were scheduled, then bumped for emergency cases. Again and again. “For 30 months, it was just this cycle,” he says. “Up the list, down the list.”
When surgery finally happened in February 2020, just before the COVID pandemic, Ant had already done something unusual. He had rehearsed life with a stoma.
Knowing surgery was coming, he contacted stoma supply companies and requested trial kits. He wore a bag filled with water. He went to the gym with it. He took walks with it. Lived in it. “I wanted to get familiar with what my body was going to look and feel like,” he says. “I thought it was going to be like wearing a nappy. It wasn’t.”
The bag didn’t smell. It wasn’t obvious. That rehearsal dismantled Ant’s biggest fears. Waking up after surgery was still confronting. The stoma was large. “Ginormous,” he says. But something else stood out immediately. “I wasn’t in pain. I had no urgency.”
For the first time in over a decade, he wasn’t planning his life around toilets.
Recovery wasn’t simple. Ant spent nineteen days in hospital. His stoma temporarily stopped working. Complications followed. But his urgency never returned. “For a third of my life, I was running to the toilet,” he says. “And suddenly, I wasn’t.”
A promising leap forward
Still, surgery wasn’t an IBD cure. Ant retains his rectum and must monitor it closely. Future surgery is likely. Years of medication have left lasting effects. “Am I cured? Yes and no,” he says. “I don’t have symptoms now, but I’ve lived through the consequences.”
He also hates his stoma sometimes.
There are days of sore skin and relentless itching. Blockages that lead to hospital stays. Moments when the bag sits awkwardly under clothes. Wind catching a full bag and making it visible. “There are days where I’m very aware that I’ve got a bag,” he says. “Those are the hard days.”
When frustration hits, Ant gets moving. “I’ll be annoyed. I’ll go do something. And then I forget why I was angry,” he says. “Because I’m not planning my life around toilets anymore.”
That reframing is what allows him to keep pushing forward. To live life to the fullest. To raise IBD awareness. And to help others navigating a similar journey.
Ant’s Instagram bio reads: On a mission to make people feel good about bag life. For him, visibility is corrective. When he first had surgery, he saw almost no young people represented.
“The marketing around stomas was old people,” he says. “I wanted younger people to see that this isn’t life-ending. Your life can start again.” Online, he fields constant questions. What is that? Can you swim? Can you eat vegetables? Can you have sex?
Education, he believes, dismantles fear. “If people are curious, they’ll ask questions,” Ant says. “More questions means more awareness.” He has spoken in the UK parliament. He has worked with medical companies. Appeared on the news. And he learned valuable lessons himself.
“Your health is the most important thing,” he says. “Jobs come and go. Relationships come and go.” Living with a stoma reshaped his understanding of disability, access, and inclusivity. He identifies as disabled without hesitation. “I have a medical device I wear all the time.”
It also gave him something unexpected: purpose.
“If I hadn’t had this condition,” he says, “I’d probably just be down the pub with my mates. Instead, I get to help people.”
Ant’s story isn’t about defeating inflammatory bowel disease. It’s about reclaiming life through adaptation, honesty, and connection. His stoma didn’t end his life. It gave him one back. Imperfect. Visible. Challenging. Meaningful.
By showing the good and the hard, by standing publicly with a bag many still fear, Ant has turned private suffering into shared reassurance. Sometimes, that is the most powerful form of healing there is.
You can follow Ant’s journey on TikTok @ibdlife and Instagram @ibdlife
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