Tantrums to Sunflowers 🌻

This morning was tough. Mornings are generally slow.

Issue is, when I sleep, if I stay in the same position for too long, my back muscles seize up and I cannot move. Whichever position that is. This morning I woke up and I could not move. I rocked from side to side for a while, like a tortoise stuck on its back and eventually got out of bed.

That was the start. The start of this mornings melt down. I am dancing close to the edge most days, best not to push me and guess what, this morning’s stoma related shit-uation was too much to handle.

So like the 34 going on 3 year old that I am, I melted down.

• It is all too much
• I can’t do it
• It’s not fair
• Everyone has had enough of me
• I’m getting in the way
• I will never get my life back

They were some big old feelings for 9:00am before a cup of tea!

I come downstairs and get a cup of tea, still feeling very sorry for myself 🥺 Trying to remind myself that the alternative literally would have been death. I am in a very negative space.

I miss smoking!!!!!!

Car pulls up outside bringing my delivery of stoma shizzle … this is to last me for a month … where am I going to keep it all? 🙈

Second car pulls up, third car pulls up, across the garden walks 2 district nurses … still no tea for dramatic me!

Nurses come in, as soon as I see them coming, I take a ‘hit’ of liquid morphine to pre empt whatever pain is heading my way.

Donna and Jen today. The district nurses are awesome, some are just even more awesome!

So Donna is on a mission to make me scream in pain but she doesn’t know who she is dealing with – the things that should hurt don’t, the things that shouldn’t hurt do 😂

Step one – remove dressing – the dressing is a very sticky plastic that covers a large portion of my stomach. Hurts like a MF … unless you are an ‘Ostomate’, my particular brand of stoma crew 😉 we carry adhesive remover, so that removing a stoma bag is not a daily sore point, which also makes it easy and pain free to remove my wound dressings too 😉

Don’t be jealous, you can have an adhesive remover spray too if you want to shit in a bag. 💩

Step two – remove the staples. Now I thought Donna had me here. In the hospital l had a couple removed 1 hurt and 1 I barely felt … Donna counts 15 so chances are there is going to be some pain 🙈 Mum takes her role as drug dealer very seriously and will not let me exceed limits so it’s time to just suck it up … 14 were fine, 1 I felt a smidge.

Donna looks furious – I mean she doesn’t but it adds to the dramataz … 😂

Step three – Extra packing 😂 They take their photos of my stomach, (this is smart, the nurses can see a full photo album of my wound from operation until today, no guess work!) they have a little chat. My actual wound is looking good, the skin is now knitting together nicely at the top and the open part at the bottom is definitely getting smaller. Donna spots that there are 3 smaller holes within the bigger hole and really thinks that next nurse visit, the best thing to do would be to start packing each of the smaller holes. She’s crazy! Lucky she doesn’t have the equipment with her today! She is on a mission! So she settled for taking a lollipop stick and sticking it around in there ‘taking measurements.’

To be fair, I think I have a very high pain threshold as even in the hospital the doctors and nurses were sure they were going to hurt me with whatever procedure and I just stared at them. I was in that much pain pre operation, that lesser pain apparently doesn’t register.

A couple of hours later I get a call from the Tissue Viability Nurse – Donna us been talking from her about me like she promised she would 🥰 Tissue nurse (based on my personal photo album) has decided it is time I say farewell to Vera! Which to be honest, I am delighted by as hopefully I can have a proper(ish) shower and maybe a decent night sleep 🤞 The TVN has also decided that instead of the horrific sounding packing – there is a fancy gel they can use instead!

Probably Donna will be back on Saturday to set me free of Vera! I joke but I really like Donna, she was so great and so thorough and really thought about me while doing my dressing – the only person who has managed to keep wound and stoma entirely separated she really took her time and listened to me. I would be happy to see her again!

Oh and the lovely Smurfette – Stacey sent me some beautiful sunflowers that brightened up my life 🌻 Hopefully I will see her lovely face next week!

I have just jumped on the ‘After Life’ bandwagon – not a huge fan is Ricky Gervais but it is actually really funny and really hard hitting 💔

Oh and I found a Facebook support group that is not depressing so things are looking up! 🥰

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