Liv­ing with an Ostomy ~ Becom­ing Friends with Your Body

After Ostomy surgery, becom­ing friends with our new body is part of the heal­ing process. Accept­ing our new body image helps us heal and move on. We all go through the heal­ing process; this is what life’s about. We often hear, “life is a jour­ney”, and it really is. Going through ill­ness like Crohn’s and Col­i­tis is most def­i­nitely a journey.

In the first part of our jour­ney, we go through denial. We know something’s wrong, but don’t tell any­one. We’re often con­fused and don’t really under­stand what’s going on. Denial can only last so long, because with the blood in the stool, and the other symp­toms, we know are not nor­mal. As symp­toms per­sist, and the pain starts to take over our lives, we tell some­one, or seek out a doc­tor. This part can often be frus­trat­ing as well, as the process of being [cor­rectly] diag­nosed can be long and treacherous.

Once we’ve been diag­nosed, we have a name for our prob­lem. This part is the poor me stage, blame stage, feel­ings of help­less­ness and anger. At this part of our jour­ney we come to real­ize that we do have a prob­lem, but it’s not our fault. We blame the world, the doc­tors, and we feel like a victim.

To get through this stage, we need to accept our­selves. Whether or not this is good or bad, right or wrong, is irrel­e­vant. It is, and we need to accept that. This is the body we have; this is the life we have. Once we accept this we can move forward.

This is a piv­otal point on this jour­ney. We can sit and wait in this place of blame, frus­tra­tion and anger or we can choose to make this a new oppor­tu­nity to move for­ward.

When we are in pain, it’s eas­ier to sit in this place of blame, rather than choose to move for­ward, because the pain blocks or abil­ity to think clearly. Not really know­ing how much pain we are in, and that we are not think­ing clearly, we tend to linger in this poor me stage for a while.

Until my surgery, I was stuck in this place of blame. I had Crohn’s dis­ease for 12 years, before my surgery, and never once knew how much pain I was in. After my surgery, I real­ized how much pain I had been in for the past 12 years. Because this pain creeps up on us over the years, we do not under­stand the level of pain we are in. Being in pain all the time we tend to go through life a lit­tle tense, a lit­tle on edge and feel­ing frus­trated, which makes it hard to move for­ward.

When we are in pain all the time, it’s hard to heal the emo­tional part of us. After I had my large bowel removed I was finally pain free, what a relief. I was now com­fort­ably liv­ing with an ostomy. Now I was able to look for­ward in life.

Start­ing to accept my body the way it was, I started to see my Ostomy as a gift and became thank­ful for it. The fact that we can pull the small bowel through the abdom­i­nal wall to even have a stoma amazed me. This amaze­ment led me to a new respect for my body. We were now becom­ing friends.

Sheri