Bodybuilder Shows the Way to Post-Ostomy Life

Take a peek at Jim McCarty’s Instagram, and the man makes a big first impression. Followers and visitors alike will find weightlifting videos that showcase his 6’2”, 260-pound frame. McCarty didn’t always look – or feel – that big.

Growing up in Philadelphia, McCarty describes himself as a “skinny little asthmatic kid” who was chased home by bullies nearly every day. Most days, an asthma attack would get the better of the 10-year-old before the bullies could. He was terrified that his father would find out about the daily ordeal. When he finally did, Dad’s advice was old-school: “When you run across the street, I want you to turn around and you get the biggest one.”

I’m feeling better than I did when I was 30 years old. My body is now saying: This is what you’re supposed to feel like.- Jim McCarty

“I did that,” McCarty recalls. “And it changed my life.”

From then on, McCarty tackled life’s challenges in much the same way. He racked up AAU medals as a competitive swimmer in high school and took to weightlifting in college. The only thing he couldn’t seem to tackle on his own was the persistent medical issue of ulcerative colitis.

The Heaviest Lift

This chronic inflammatory bowel disease attacks the lining of the colon and rectum, causing sores that can bleed and painful bowel movements. From his 20s onward, McCarty managed the disease with medication. While months might go by without a flare-up, it could be debilitating --and embarrassing -- when one occurred.

McCarty, now 54, didn’t let the condition rule his life. He married Jackie, the love of his life, in 1999. They had a son, Jimmy, who gave his father a new purpose in life – and as the years went on, a new workout partner.

By the mid-2010s, McCarty’s ulcerative colitis began worsening. Now living in Florida, he was referred to specialists at Orlando Health. Dr. Udayakumar Navaneethan, a board-certified gastroenterologist and inflammatory bowel disease specialist at Orlando Health Digestive Health Institute, put McCarty on a new regimen of immunosuppressant treatments. For a time, they kept the symptoms at bay.

Life-Changing Surgery

Ulcerative colitis could lead to colon cancer -- something McCarty already had in his family history – so he had a colonoscopy every year. As fate would have it, the one colonoscopy appointment he missed was the one he really needed: In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, and for months, non-urgent medical procedures went on the backburner for millions of Americans.

All the while, he suffered. His bowel movements had gradually become more painful, and he was losing both blood and weight. By the time he was able to get to see Dr. Navaneethan, the colonoscopy showed evidence of pre-cancerous cells and severe inflammation. The colon that had plagued McCarty for so long would have to be removed, and the man to do it would be Dr. Marco Ferrara, a board-certified colorectal surgeon with Orlando Health Colon and Rectal Institute.

The surgery would leave McCarty with an ostomy bag, which collects bodily waste through a surgically created stoma, or opening, in the abdomen. The stigma of that weighed heavily on him. How would he still be able to lift weights, if at all? How would he live?

Luckily, Dr. Ferrara had heard those concerns before.

“A lot of people assume that it’s the end of their life and they can’t do any of the things that they’re used to,” Dr. Ferrara says. But he stressed that, while adjustments must be made, it’s still possible to have a full life.  

It also helped that neither Dr. Navaneethan nor the surgeon McCarty would come to know as “Dr. Marco” were ones to sugar-coat his diagnosis.

“What I used to do for a living was conduct employee interviews,” McCarty recalls. “So, you are taught how to read people in a nutshell. … Fortunately, meeting both these guys, neither one of them has a hint of deception on them. They were just all about wanting to get me fixed.”

The choice was ultimately up to McCarty, so he did the only thing he knew how to do. He stopped running. He turned around. He went in for the life-changing surgery.

Answered Prayers

McCarty spent about four hours on the operating table. His family was there through it all, getting the play-by-play from Orlando Health Orlando Regional Medical Center’s patient care system.

“They've got all this cool technology at Orlando Health,” McCarty says. “It's like being at an airport where you have the TVs up there that have the patient and where they're at. It's constantly about sharing information without having to have the nurses running back and forth because they're busy enough.”

 During the procedure, Dr. Ferrara and his team took out the problematic area of the colon and found exactly what they feared: colon cancer that had spread to part of the rectum, all of which were removed. In the end, McCarty’s digestive system was rerouted out through a stoma in his midsection.

When McCarty awoke in recovery, he was left with the sight of that stoma and a ton of new questions.

“So I'm lying there and I'm looking at this thing and I'm going, ‘Oh my God.’ Like, it looks so hard. I mean, it just looks so hard,” McCarty remembers. “How am I going to do this when I'm 70? How am I going to do this when I'm 80?”

As he often did in his hardest hours, the big man turned to a higher power. “I said, ‘Listen, God, I'm not praying for the pain to go away. I'm not even praying for the cancer to go away. I'm praying for a way forward. I need to see, is this a month, a year? Am I going to learn this stuff? I was so unsettled and scared. I was just looking for a way forward.”

New Goals, New Gains

More than three years later, McCarty remains cancer-free. He underwent a second surgery to have the remaining part of his rectum removed. Yes, he has an ostomy bag, but he can now sleep through the night without being awakened for bowel urgency – something he hadn’t been able to do for decades.

“I’m feeling better than I did when I was 30 years old,” McCarty says. “My body is now saying, ‘This is what you’re supposed to feel like.’”

He also was able to start gaining the weight back that he’d lost during the worst parts of his disease. And while he was hesitant to get back into the gym at first, McCarty credits his son with getting him off the couch and back on the weight bench. Today, you can see the father-and-son workout team posting their gains on McCarty’s Instagram page, which he also uses to reach out to a global community of ostomy patients.

McCarty works part time at his local gym, but his passion is being an advocate and cheerleader for his fellow “ostomy warriors.” He is a volunteer with the Embracing Ostomy Life support group, providing mentorship for new “ostomates.” Through it all, his motto has been “Don’t survive, thrive” – and he practices what he preaches.

He even named his stoma, as so many other ostomy patients do. Fittingly, McCarty’s is called “grace.”

“Because by the grace of God I’m here,” he explains. “If God came to me right now and said I can take the ostomy away, make you perfect, not have any bag or nothing, I would say no. I would keep my ostomy because it keeps me in touch with these people to help them and it gives me purpose.”