You’re scarred, you have a bag attached to you and you’ve gone through all that to be able to eat normally again, and the first thing you’re told is you can’t actually eat any of the foods you want to. "When you first get your bag, you are given a list of about 2 billion things you cannot eat. It only took me nearly ten years to get there." Play by the eating rules, to a degree In reality, I believe it was a way of devaluing it and making it seem irrelevant to my life – which obviously it wasn’t, as it had probably saved it.ĭo you know what I call it now? My bag. In my head, I think that calling it that meant I could talk about it and nobody would know what I was talking about. My Thing, The Thing… it was always Thing. I mean this woman was lovely - she smiled 24/7, clearly had a heart of gold and there was no colostomy question she did not have the answer to – but as a 22-year-old (let’s face it, pretty sarcastic and hardened) woman, with a world that had been turned upside down, naming the newly attached bag, “something nice like Jo” and “thinking of it like a new friend,” did nothing other than make me hate it even more.įrom that day onwards, I called it ‘Thing’. However, when it comes to adjusting to your new body and how to cope with it in the real world, in all honestly, unless they have one, they really have no clue.Ī post shared by Becks Greatbanks remember my stoma nurse advising me to give it a name. They are the pros at helping you when you need to learn how to attach your colostomy bag, what to do when it’s sore or won’t stick (yes, that does happen….), and what not to eat. "I don’t mean medically – always take their advice on that front. I’ve decided the best way to mark the occasion is to write a message to the old me and to all the other women who may just be starting out on that same journey, about the new world I was entering." As lovely as the nurses are, don't always trust their advice There are so many things I wish I’d known earlier on. My colostomy bag was mine.Ī lot has changed in the last few years. So what changed? Why now? Why at all? We all have our little secrets, our issues to bear, the things about us we don’t want the whole world to know. Now, if someone had said to me three years ago I would talk to even my closest friends and family about this ‘thing,’ let alone millions of you, I would have laughed them out of the room. Nope, it’s 10 years of living with a colostomy bag. It wasn't an amazing career milestone or hitting my tin wedding anniversary. "On July 14th, 2017, I celebrated a pretty big 10-year anniversary. The realities of living with a colostomy bag Keep reading for her story-of positivity, power, and learning to love her body. Here, she explains what living with a colostomy bag is actually like, and explains how it affects your work life, home life, and love life. It may just take some readjustment and getting used too, as Lisbeth Strutt outlines below. These usually take a period of about three months to heal fully, and sometimes require surgery (a 'reversal') to fully close the colon.įun fact number two: you can live a full and happy life with a colostomy bag. Some are, but others can also be temporary and removed. Fun fact number one: not all colostomy bags are permanent.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |