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Today we’ll go all the way back to 2001, the year I got my colostomy. Nothing I ever thought I would go through, it changed the way I viewed my body and how I felt about myself. I dealt with mine by reading message boards and talking to other people who had one. Most of those were permanent and I knew mine was only temporary. Still, it’s hard to feel sexy or even clean with a baggie of poop at your waist.
It took a minute, but I did get to where I was able to deal with it. Of course, as in most things I had to learn a lot the hard way. You still get gas with a colostomy, you just don’t expel it the usual way. Your bag would fill with gas and you would have to “burp” it. Once I started recovering from the surgery I would burp my bag in the garage. Because of where it is in your digestive track, the smell was something you thought you would have to file an EPA report on. The timing of any colostomy related events was never in my control, and in my oh so intelligent manner of being, I never learned to do anything the easy way. I always chose the hard way. Rudy told me not to do it, he told me that nothing good would come of it. I did it anyway. I had such a craving for sauerkraut and I figured since I was alone it certainly wouldn’t hurt to indulge my craving. I’ll just say this, when I watched my bag fill with a category 5 tornado of gas, that when it flew off of me landing on the wall on the other side of the living room I was not surprised. Mortified? In a word yes. I was so so happy to be home alone.
