Life with a Ostomy

My Journey of Pulling Through

It’s amazing how comfortable I am now with my life with an Ostomy. I have come along way. Being 23 when I became severely ill and needing to go to hospital, the thought of an Ostomy scared me so much that by the time I would let my self go, I was almost dead. So scared of having an Ostomy I did not know how I could ever go through life like that.

Another part of my problem too was that I felt that going through with this kind of surgery would make me a failure. Reading Louse Hay and all that self help stuff, I thought that what they were teaching was that if you can not heal your self, then you are a failure. This misunderstanding added to my illness with the burden of judgment on my self and others which in no way is beneficial to any one dealing with disease.

Now that I am older I have found that there is a fine line in this teaching around this and there are a lot of people confused. For me, I found that love and acceptance of one self is really the Journey. When I meet people who still are at the other point of the understanding and have this kind of judgment for themselves and others, I know in my heart that they have not pulled through in their understanding of a Journey, since this is where I started it is easy to accept them.

To all of you at the beginning of this Journey, remember it is actually quite an interesting one. One day you will be amazed how comfortable you are with it all, maybe even thankful that you were given this to become the person you are today. I am.

S.