*Real ostomy dreams before waking up with a full pouch.
**This is a bizarre one today.
I was changing my pouch one day and the stool kept coming out of the bag and would not stop long enough for me to get a new pouch on my skin. I realized somehow that my stool from the future was coming out of my stoma, days and days worth from the future all at once. I put a pouch loosely over my stoma to collect the waste. When it filled up I set it aside and filled another pouch. I continued doing this because all the stool I’d ever have go through my stoma was coming out at once. (What a time-saver that would be!)
Once all the bags were full, I printed off white plastic labels for each bag. The labels had the date of when the stool was supposed to be emptied. I don’t know why I didn’t just throw all the pouches away. Instead, I planned on saving each pouch and then putting it on my barrier on the proper date, and then emptying it.
Happy Thanksgiving everybody. I hope all is well. Today be thankful for what you have and be thankful for what you don’t have.
For everybody suffering a flare up today, in the hospital, undergoing surgery, or recovering from surgery, I know what it’s like to miss Thanksgiving. Hopefully you find something to be thankful for this day.
I recommend everybody does this at some point as a way of fighting their colitis. Physical and symbolic acts such as fire leave lasting impressions on your brain, and are memories of encouragement to take with you when things get dark again.
Keep fighting,
Dennis
Question: How have you prepared for accidents in public?
*Real ostomy dreams before waking up with a full pouch.
I was in the living room of a very large house. The house had many rooms and white carpet. Other people were with me and I looked down at my pouch and saw it was half full. Strangely, the stool inside was frozen solid, a hard hemisphere of waste. I walked through the living room and into a side room.
The floor of the room was twenty feet below me, and the ceiling was just as far away. The room was very long and cold. Snow covered the floor, and four snow forts were built against the wall. I stepped into the room at the bottom of the slope, the snow forts above me. A girl from one of my classes tried talking to me but I couldn’t hear her so I walked to the other end of the room and climbed up to the door.
The next room was a swamp. Wooden logs made a small L-shaped path to the next door. I started walking across the logs when two motorcross drivers raced in on their cycles and sped across the log bridge.
Then I got into my car and drove down the Interstate. The road was three lanes wide and nobody was out yet, as it was early in the morning. I was in the far left lane and within seconds two guys walked up to me, each taking up the other two lanes. The two men walked calmly next to me. I clocked them at 50 mph, even though they were just walking, not running.
For everybody curious about swimming with an ileostomy, this is how you do it. Or at least, this is how I’ve done it the three or four times I’ve gone swimming. I’m sure professional ileostomates have a better system than mine, but if you only have a temporary ileostomy and are only going to swim a couple times between surgeries, there’s no sense getting real worked up about it.
For the curious, I found this product yesterday. It’s essential a plastic wrap that’s supposed to keep your ostomy dry and safe. If I’d learned of products like this a couple months ago I might’ve bought one and tried it out for you all, but it’s $60 and my takedown is in less than a month, so it’s not worth it.
Keep fighting,
-Dennis
Question: Have you swam with an ileostomy? How did it go?
Hey everybody, I went to CVS/pharmacy a few days ago to get some heat pads. On rare days the area around my stoma hurts, usually at the end of the day, most likely because my body’s getting tired. So heat pads help with that. And when I was in there, I was amazed at their impressive cigarette display behind the counter. I think they have more cigarettes than the grocery stores and liquor stores! Does it seem odd to anybody else that cigarettes are on one end of the store and the pharmacy is on the other?
*Real ostomy dreams before waking up with a full pouch.
I got up in the middle of the night to empty my ostomy pouch. I went into the bathroom and was very tired. I went through my standard routine to empty the pouch, except the pouch had a lot of stool in it and I needed much toilet paper to clean out the bag. When I was finally finished, the entire toilet bowl was full of paper. I flushed it anyway and immediately the toilet clogged. The bowl overflowed and water leaked everywhere. I grabbed the plunger but could not get the water to stop.
Hey everybody, the final video of this week is about the pains associated with surgery. Many people who are considering surgery ask me about how much it hurts…hopefully this video answers those questions.
And in case you’re a nerd, you can watch all these videos in high quality simply by clicking on the video player a couple times to bring you to the YouTube page for that video. Then click the “watch in high quality” tag in the lower right corner of the player.
Keep fighting,
-Dennis
Question: What kind of pain did you experience after surgery?
Many of us have ostomies only temporarily. And many people around the world are in need of supplies. So if you have any extra unused, new, and clean supplies, send them our way!
We are collecting supplies to send to Haiti with a medical team!
Current progress:
1114 bags and flanges
2108 medical supplies
