Issue number 18 (Summer 2010) of the UK Colostomy Association’s Tidings magazine has just been printed and is hitting doormats around the country as I type.

Inside this 56 page edition you’ll find many articles and features, including:

An Ostomate’s Travelogue Down Under
In Conversation with a Colostomate
Gardening as an Ostomate
Reader replies to the previous edition
Diverticular Disease – Pathways to a Colostomy
Breakaway Weekend May 2010
Stoma Care Management
… and lots, lots more!

Also, on page 36 you’ll find a two page article celebrating the 12th anniversary of some ostomy support website or other, whats it called again? Oh yeah, Ostomyland! If you do not receive the magazine for any reason then if you click on the preview graphic below you can read the article in .pdf format (adobe reader required).

If you like in the UK, and are a Colostomate or the relative/carer of of one, and would like to receive future editions of the magazine (for free) please contact the Colostomy Association on 0800 328 4257 or email them.

Useful Links:
Colostomy Association (UK) Website

Click to read the Oland Anniversary Article from Tidings #18

  This content has been Digiproved © 2010 Ostomyland

The June 2010 edition of the Ostomyland newsletter is now available online and it covers the biggest Oland community news stories in the last two months.

Our newsletter is sent out to all members of the message board who have visited the site in the last six months and have the option to receive admin emails checked in their notification preferences.

Highlights of this newsletter includes:

• Jimbob the Candidate
• Doug’s Irrigation Video
• Ostomyland @ Breakaway
• and many more articles…

If you haven’t received a copy of the newsletter, dont worry you can catch up with an online copy of it here. Our next newsletter will be sent out in August.

  This content has been Digiproved © 2010 Ostomyland

I just want to take this chance to wish everyone who is going to this weekend’s Breakaway visit at the YHA centre at the National Forest, an absolutely fabulous time. May lots of fun and laughs be had, and lots of friendships forged.

Ostomyland will also be attending the event. Our very own Kathy_from_England will be there for the weekend to doss about… um, sorry, represent Ostomyland, and will be attending the exhibition to spread the word about the Oland site and community. Be sure to grab one of our leaflets while there!

Have a great time Breakaway!

More about Breakaway:

Breakaway Visits is the only England & Wales based charity offering residential adventure activity breaks for young people from 4-18 with bowel and/or bladder diversions and dysfunctions and their families.

Breakaway offers the chance for families and young people to meet, talk about and share their experiences in a relaxed and friendly environment. The main aim of Breakaway though, is to have fun!

For more information visit:
http://www.breakaway-visit.co.uk

  This content has been Digiproved © 2010 Ostomyland

First there was an “important announcement” made on the board, and a link placed in the chat room too:
Important Changes To Our Forum Terms and Rules/

Clicking the link within this post took you to a page with this “error” on it:

(click on this image to view it full size)

Clicking anywhere on the original image took you to the April Fool’s page:

To add this to your sig

Just type this:

CODE

Oh – and one more thing – please don’t say anything on the board just yet about it being an April’s Fool!

Return to the board

The second post was this one:
Email Virus Warning
at the bottom of the post was a link which took you once again to the April Fool’s Page above.

We hope you enjoyed our 2010 Fooling!

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2010 Jason D.

We know Fiz did, as she has this in her sig:

Congratulations Fiz!!

There were two posts on the board which lead you to the badge. Which were these? I’ll tell you soon!!

  Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2010 Jason D.

Ostomyland was invited to Diversions’ Activity Day recently and had a very enjoyable time meeting new people.

“oooh it’s all dark!”

A big ‘thank you’ to our Mel for asking us to bring along our leaflets to hand out and spread the word about the online support available here.

For information about ‘Diversions’ see their Facebook Group
http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#!/group.php?gid=354950504162&ref=mf

Or contact Mel on Ostomyland’s Message Board.

  Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2010 Jason D.

Happy Birthday Ostomyland! We are 12 today, and without the support of our wonderful members and readers we would never have made it this far. So, thank you very, very much everyone.

As promised today is the day I’m launching v2.0 of the wiki. The links on the menu on the left hand side have been updated, and you can also click here to go to it. As with all wiki’s this is a project that is a continual work in progress, it isnt an exhaustaive Ostomy encyclodpaedia… yet. And also like other wiki’s YOU (yes you, the one reading this!) can add and edit pages. Full instructions are on the wiki homepage. If you do create a page, dont worry over the formatting, I’ll tidy it all up if anything goes wrong. Just have fun playing with it.

v2.0 of the wiki contains almost 250 pages of ostomy related health and product related information. Thats over 100 pages more than it’s previous incarnation.

I’m delighted to be able to announce that the new Ostomyland Community message board is now live. You can access it via the links on the left hand side menu, or by visiting us directly at the new link of http://www.ostomyland.org/ostomyboardipb/

Thanks to everyone for their patience over the last 48 hour during our message board downtime. I hope you enjoy the new board with it’s many new features such as free blogs, integrated chat and integrated photo galleries. And of course we’ve not forgotten the Ostomy Support forums which are still there as always to offer advice and support from ostomates for ostomates.

The new blogs feature is going to be a great resource for ostomates to chart their progress since the operation, and to let future ostomates read what to expect pre-and-post op. And of course the blogs can be used for off topic blogging as well, I’m not limiting the use of them to ostomy-only content.

The galleries will feature all our members photos that they want to share with us, and will help future ostomates see how life goes on post op, and that having an Ostomy is not the end of the world.

The integrated chat room access link is a great boon to the board, giving members a simple one click access into the channel. When you are logged in you just need click on the Chat Room tab on the message board, and you’ll be taken directly into the room, with your board username as your chat room nickname.

There’s a lot of new features to the board, and I appreciate it’s a lot to get used to. To try and help members adjust to the new features I’ve created a series of “How-To” help videos, showing you how to use the new features of the board. You’ll find the videos in the board’s “New Board Tech Help” forum, the link to which is here:
http://www.ostomyland.org/ostomyboardipb/index.php?/forum/2-new-board-techie-help/

As members of our community will already be aware, we have some new message board/community software in the works. I’m pleased to be able to announce that the Ostomyland Message Board will be upgraded to the Invision Power Board system during the weekend of September 12/13/14th. During this time our message board will be unavailable to allow us to work on the database and website.

The new software will give us lots of new features that will help make Ostomyland more streamlined in it’s use as well as offering new services such as free blogs for all members, integrated one-click access to our chat room, facebook connect features and free photo gallery service.

We are asking all members whom have stored private messages on our message board to make copies of them, as these will not be converted over to the new board. We hope to be able to convert about 99% of all member accounts and current threads/posts, but there is always the chance of corruption during the conversion process so we are also advising members that if they have any favourite threads to make back ups of them just in case they do get lost in transit – so to speak. Full details of how to do this can be found in the full announcement linked to below.

Message Board Downtime and Upgrade Announcement:
http://www.ostomyland.org/ostomyboard/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=8840

We’re busy giving our message board community and chat room a recamp. In the near future you’ll be able to log into the chat room via the message board, making connection and chatting considerably easier.

In the meantime we’ve just launched our newly updated Chatroom Stats page. Automatically updated by Pooh (the channel bot) every ten minutes, the stats page shows the top 25 chatters usage statistics along with photos of them, random quotes for each of the 25 (which can often be hilarious when taken out of context), and lots of fun facts such as most used words, who said the most along with charts and graphs of chat room usage.

It’s a really fun page and a firm chatter favourite, so even if you dont join in the chat room why not check out our new stats page. You can find it at:

http://www.ostomyland.com/olandstats/

Want your picture on the stats?
If you are a chat user, and want your picture added to the script ready for when you break into the top 25 users, then please email the photo to me as an attachment, or preferably a URL to its location on the internet. I also need your channel nickname and any reserve names you may have (such as away nicks etc)  and I’ll do the rest!

Dont forget though that you have to be in the top 25 chatters for the photo to show, so thats as good an excuse as ever to join todays weekly support chat meeting (8pm UK / 3pm EST ish)  and have a good ol’ chat! Chat room is also open 24/7 for off topic chat or impromptu support chats.