All Show and No Go

A friend said to me today “you ostomate’s have a great sense of humour” after reading a status update I thieved from another ostomate. I wrote back “we all either poop or pee into a bag, and THAT is funny.”
Some ostomates learn to laugh at themselves early on. I fortunately learned to laugh at myself a few years before Oscar made his appearance.
I was 19 when Chrohn’s arrived in the form of 2 rectal abscesses (6 feet of packing on one side, 8 feet of packing on the other) weight plummeting to 92lbs, extreme anaemia, and vomiting everything that I ate. I was embarrassed and would not talk about the fact that I couldn’t go somewhere if a washroom wasn’t readily available. My early 20’s was marked by total silence about my health issues and total denial about what was really happening to my insides.
The summer of 2004 changed everything. I went into day surgery to have seton’s inserted to help close the fistula’s, they had been draining since the first surgery in 1999. I was on Imuran, a drug that decreases your immune system, and as such ended up with an infection that left me septic 3 days later. To make a VERY long and dreadfully boring story short, I had 3 strokes and was left without the ability to walk or talk. Can you imagine ME not being able to talk?? I was 25 years old and could barely feed myself let alone carry on the lifestyle of “party girl extraordinaire.” It took the following year of living with my mom, going on long slow walks with the family Doberman and just learning to love myself before I felt well enough to deal with the world. I learned something very valuable in my year long struggle back to normalcy; I learned to laugh at myself. A lot.
I realized everyone has some sort of struggle in their lives, from being a 25 year old who has to re-learn how to use a fork to the 80 year old that is just discovering the internet. For me, it was easier to look someone in the eye and say “I need a washroom..NOW” and make a run for it, then worry about what others were thinking and saying when I inevitably disappeared for hours on end. I also learned that life is funny. Come on, I poop into a bag attached to my abdomen, If I was a stand up comedian Oscar would have already provided me hours of material.
So thank you Oscar and thank you fellow Ostomate’s who have also realized life is amusing in all its ridiculous forms. I truly love being a bag wearing, Barbie butt (all show, no go) ostomate and will continue for the rest of MY life to take things with just a sprinkling of humour.