Finding Your Team after an Ostomy.

When it comes to adjusting to life with a stoma and ostomy pouch, it’s not always easy. First you have to make peace with the realization that the surgery is needed and that it will forever alter your life. Then once that happens or sometimes before, you have to go through the actual surgery. Which to be honest, is the easy part. The hardest part comes after, and I’m not just talking about the weeks long recovery from having your intestines (or bladder) cut and rearranged. I’m talking about mentally, when you no longer feel like a normal person. Certain things you used to do, and I think you know what I speak of, you can no longer do how you used too. Instead, you have to remind yourself to empty pouches, filled with not so nice things, and you have to take extra care to make sure certain odors aren’t floating around you. You also have to readjust your activities. While nothing is necessarily off the table, you do have to, in some ways, relearn how to do the things you love. And none of this comes easily. In fact, in can be one of the hardest things you have to do. So that’s why, as someone who’s been where you’ve been, can tell you one of the most important things you can do is to surround yourself with people who love you. 

 

Trying to get through a mountain like this on your own can you lead you down some really dark roads. But, if you’re willing to ask for help, it won’t necessarily make it easier, but it can help you endure. And that’s what the recovery process is all about. It’s about learning how to endure what’s been given to you and come out even better and stronger on the other side. But that doesn’t happen an isolation. That can only happen when you reach out to those around you. 

 

And trust me, I know sometimes it can be hard to try to talk to someone about how you feel who knows absolutely nothing about what it is you’re going through. That’s why I also would highly recommend you join a support group. Whether there is a physical one locally (although with COVID they may not be meeting right now), or you turn to a community online of people who knows exactly what it means to be where you are. I can stress enough the importance of having those connections during this time. I know for me, having had that community while going through surgery and the past year of COVID and 2020, I can say with 100% certainty that it helped me from falling into a depression I don’t know if I could have come out of. 

 

Living life after an ostomy isn’t always easy. But having those people around you who love and support you, can and will make all the difference. And I promise, in time, as you recover and get used to the new normal, things will start to look up again. Life will become enjoyable again, and then you will be able to reach out your hand into that very same community who held you up, and you’ll be able to lift up the next person who is where you are now. And I can say, it is one of the most rewarding feelings in the world.