
I had 5 surgeries in Barcelona, where I nearly lost my life. It began with a really sharp pain in my abdomen, an emergency operation because there was sepsis and a perforation in my sigmoid colon. - a life threatening condition. The barcelona doctors closed the perforation, but, unfortunately, the colon started to leak. There was a buildup of fluid and a stone then dislodged itself from my gall bladder, which was extremely extremely painful. Another emergency operation took place. But, while in the OR, my vitals started to fail. Perhaps not knowing what to do, the doctors decided to stall for time, and put me in an induced coma for 5 days. Long story short, many things went wrong - i ended up losing my appendix, gall bladder, parts of my stomach (there was so much bleeding). There were 3 more procedures, but I survived. I left spain with a mesh in my abdomen, a colostomy bag, no core muscles in my abdomen (they had been moved to the side to accommodate the mesh), 30% less blood in my left leg (they had accidentally nicked my iliac artery), and a huge ulcer on my left foot (i spent 7 weeks in the hospital, most of it in the ICU, and i was not moved much).
For most of the year, i rehabbed slowly. I learned how to live - survive, really - with a colostomy bag, and consulted with the best doctors in Manila on how to remove the colostomy bag (the procedure is called a reverse Hartmann), how to remove the mesh, and somehow restoring my core muscles.
None of the top doctors consulted were comfortable preforming the reverse Hartmann. “Too many adhesions - it may take 8 hours before we get beyond the adhesions”, said one. “The reverse Hartmann is the most difficult procedure that a rectal surgeon can perform”. “Your intestines are all over the place, we may have a hard time recognizing things”. I had been through so many surgeries, the doctors were concerned that my innards were jumbled up.
“We will need 2 operations, the reverse Hartmann, and the 2nd for the mesh”. The explanation was that the 1st was a “dirty” procedure, involving fecal matter, and that the 2nd was a clean procedure, that required everything to be clean to avoid infection.
After a long search, and after weighing all options, I decided to have the surgery in London.
Dr Edward Westcott performed the reverse Hartman on me at Princess Grace hospital in London on October, 2025. To my surprise, both procedures - reverse Hartman and mesh removal were done in one shot, contrary to what my other doctors had told me was possible. The whole procedure took 4 hours, and I was up and walking in 24hours. Best surprise was that I was able to regain control of my core muscles. The mesh in my abdomen had ripped apart my core and I had difficulty getting out of bed, or into cars, or walking up unsteady surfaces. Anything requiring good core muscles - I could not do. None of the doctors could tell me how my core would behave after surgery as there were few who had my problem - abdominal mesh, no core muscles, colostomy bag. Not only was the colostomy bag gone, I could now play sports and engage in regular activities like a regular human being.
I am told that this was made possible due to some very recent advances & techniques - they injected my abdomen with Botox 6 weeks prior to surgery - to allow them to stretch my abdomen more during the operation. Then they used some new flexible bio mesh that allowed the doctors to join my core muscles together, yet stretch and move about.
All in all I am very pleased and happy to recommend Dr Westcott to anyone in need of abdominal surgery. I won’t say my body is as good as before, but it is a damn better than anything I expected.
Seen for:
Reversal of Hartmann's Procedure