Rachel is a wife, mother and ostomate who works at Coloplast as an Ostomy Consumer Care Advisor. Struggling to graduate from college as she couldn’t eat anything and lost 40lbs within months; she was always told it was just from stress. She was finally diagnosed in July 2014 after months of testing. Due to the severity of her disease progression her first surgery for her Crohn’s was a colectomy to remove 9” of blocked terminal ileum.

Three years later, in 2017, her ostomy was finally placed and a new challenge arose. She was pregnant and found an OBGYN that had worked with patients with ostomies previously. Life after pregnancy wasn’t easy navigating staying hydrated and life with a newborn. Since she felt so good, she decided to make her ostomy permanent even though her surgeon left her colon in place.

Learning to be confident with the ostomy was the biggest challenge in finding clothing; to finding the right type of ostomy to make her life more manageable. She really loves to educate and empower people with an ostomy, because life being normal is boring anyways.