Just a little re-cap of me for anyone new…because, seeing me on a page is different to seeing me in real life.
Mainly because I only post the few good photos.
I’d never use a filter on myself, absolutely not. I wouldn’t know how. I can’t quite understand why anyone would. Celebs can get away with it because we’re very unlikely to see them in the flesh.
Admittedly, I do post only the nicest photos of me, so they are flattering, but unfiltered.
I know my pictures look pretty life-like because I have been recognised, out and about, from my blog on 4 separate occasions.
But at home, alone, I look like a sack of crap most of the time. For example today I am wearing some rather comfy pjs (I’m washed, but just chilling).
So this is me…
I’m 48
I’m 5’ 3 and 3/4 inches (yes, the 3/4 matters)
I’m 11 stone 4lbs (higher than it should be maybe but as a friend said the other day. I wear it well). :)
I’m completely and utterly unsponsored by anyone, but Chris. Anything you see me wearing is because I love it, and Chris paid for it.
If I recommend something it’s because I love it or enjoy it. No one is giving me payments. And I’d never accept anyway, I like to speak as I find. and I just don’t think I could if I was being paid to.
I write this blog because I enjoy sharing positivity about having a stoma. Positivity that I didn’t believe possible when I heard I needed a colostomy.
I believe in the good that can come from having one. And I also believe I look perfectly nice with one, so that’s a bonus. :)
I love food, friends and some family.
I love life.
I am me. :)
What a week!!
Thursday afternoon I was merrily pottering round at home, when a friend popped round with a present for Chris.
Whilst they were here dropping it off, up walks Sam, Milly and Zak!
They live two and a half hours away, so they can’t just pop in.
But to my absolute delight they had decided to come for a surprise long weekend!
Chris had been in on it. So he had been behind the scenes pulling some strings.
Fortunately for me I had been out shopping to stock up the freezer, so I had loads of food in.
I was then further surprised when they told me we were all off to the zoo the next day.
At first I said I wasn’t going to be able to make it…Chris had asked me to wait in and sign for a parcel…but that was all part of their cunning plan. There was no parcel to wait for. It was just a way of keeping the day free for me.
I can’t tell you how happy it made me. My heart was full to brimming.
Then added to the surprise, my mum and dad were going to be meeting us at the zoo!
I appreciate they were more coming to see Zak, but it felt nice that we were all going to have a day out together. Making memories. At a certain point in life, making memories becomes more important that things.
We had such an amazing day!
Before we went off to the zoo on Friday morning I said to Sam and Milly that I was planning to grab my dad’s hand and make him skip!
…yes, I appreciate that’s a bit weird, but when I was a teenager my dad would wait till people were about and he would say “let’s skip!!” And drag me along and try to embarrass me.
So I pre warned Sam to be camera ready for this but!…I grabbed my mum and dad’s hands and my DAD says “let’s skip!!!”
…So we did!!!
It was bloody hilarious and bloody brilliant!!
The zoo trip was such a treat. It was a shame Chris wasn’t there for it. But it was still wonderful. How lovely, for four generations of a family to be able to enjoy a day out all together. I don’t take anything for granted, but especially things that money can’t buy.
I very much enjoyed the ride on the zoo road train, where my mum and dad actually joined in making the train whistle noise and the wolf howling, as requested by the driver! :)
Do you ever feel sometimes when you are doing something in the moment that it is going to be a lasting, fun memory. Well that’s how I felt about the day at the zoo.
How to prepare for a day out. Well, pretty much the same as the non bagged, just with added spares. I’m not in denial or anything, but to me, I am the same as I was before my operation. I just happen to poo in a bag.
“Well how can that be the same then?!?”
I don’t know, I get that it’s something so life changing. But it simply doesn’t feel it. I have, more so recently, heard a stoma referred to as a disability. Which to some it may well be, if they are still unwell, and I totally understand. The emotional toll it can have, the tricky, leaky, painful stomas.
I totally accept that I am very lucky to feel the way I do.
Because for me it’s given me more than it’s taken away. I am bionic! Well, I’m not, but my bowels are!
I am now able to go anywhere I choose - Have bag, will travel.
I wasn’t able to do this for so so long before my diagnosis of cancer. I was symptomatic for a very long time. It was just unfortunately dismissed as IBS.
The world became so small back then.
When you’ve shit yourself more than once, the world can be terrifying.
Pre op I couldn’t imagine my life with the ‘disgusting, repulsive, horrific bag’
Post op, I couldn’t imagine a life without my ‘life enhancing, life fulfilling…actually very handy bag’.
My perspective Pre op, of having a stoma, was blighted by ignorance and misinformation.
My lived experience has shown me I couldn’t have been more wrong. (I only can speak for me about my experience. My colostomy is a very well behaved addition to my body).
It is a force of positivity. It’s given me the opportunity to play in the world again. Coming up twelve years ago I got to start living my second life. Part one was fun but often blighted by pain and accidents.
Part two has been pain free (apart from when I’m constipated), and pretty much accident free (a few bag leaks, which are mortifyingly embarrassing, but oddly enough, less so than shitting myself the old fashioned way).
On the whole it’s been a very positive experience. But this is naturally positive. I’m not forcing it. I am just very centred and at peace and happy with it.
Please don’t feel you have to be happy about yours too, just because others are. You’re allowed to feel whatever it is you are feeling.
Toxic positivity is so common in our society. When someone is diagnosed with cancer or other diseases for that matter, people try and force positivity on them.
I get it, I understand why, in fact I’m probably even guilty of doing it. It makes us feel better if the ill person has a smile on their face, but that’s for our benefit, not theirs. So rather than say stay positive, keep smiling, etc etc…
When I was first diagnosed I was a jibbering, crying mess. But within all that turmoil and trauma I tried to find something joyful each day, and something I was grateful for each day.
Even something simple like a trip to the beach and a sandwich, watching the waves.
It won’t change the outcome. But it certainly helps along the journey (as corny as the word journey is, it works for getting through a disease).
Find some joy. Even on the very bleakest days.
This thought process can be applied to most of life’s tricky situations.
******
Saturday we had a small gathering of friends. Our first indoors in two years.
It was wonderful, and not without its concerns. But I opened all the windows. And hand gelled everyone, everyone lateral flowed before they came.
We’re mostly triple vaxxed, but the ones that aren’t have only just had covid so there will be protection in that.
(when the vaccine first came out it guaranteed you protection from hospitalisation and death. Sadly as covid evolved it broke through our protection. So now it’s a case of hopefully it’ll do all those things. But I’d take hopefully it will, over no protection at all).
Gatherings are nerve racking at the best of times. But add on you don’t really want to be pin pointed as a super spreader event, and the anxiety goes off the chart.
Will people come? Will they have a nice time? Will they catch a deadly disease and die? Will they like my trifle after I went to such great efforts with it…possibly not in that order! Hahahah
It was such a lovely day. Exhausting but lovely.
Kim’s girls came over, and bearing in mind that the twins and Zak haven’t seen each other since they were babies, they got on like a house on fire.
The girls came through the door, Zak walked up to them and said “This is my Christmas jumper”, pointing at said jumper.
And that was that. Playing, dancing, running around joyously ensued. Oh to be two and a bit and 4 again.
It was such a good day. And so lovely to welcome people back into the house. We have a 14 seater dining table and for the last two years it’s pretty much been just me and Chris. It was wonderful to fill it up again.
Over Christmas I yearned for Christmas past. So I decided the theme for our gathering was 70s inspired catering.
Cheese and wine (0.0 alcohol for most of us). Vol au vents, cheese and pineapple hedgehog, Pink Panther wafers and trifle.
* vol au vents are not as desirable as I remembered them to be. Utterly, ridiculously inedible in company. The puff pastry explodes, the filling drips out. Very messy - 1 star.
I table scaped with Willow patterned plates and Bordallo Pinheiro, cabbage plates, all a very 70s vibe. I dug the disco light ball out of the shed (I say I but you knew I meant Chris, right? It’s very ratty and dark in there, I’m too scared to go in).
I bought a pinny (apron), to be a proper 70s housewife, and added a centre parting and lilac eye shadow. I have been noticing that table scaping is creeping into people scaping to match the scenery. :)
I saw some old fashioned type chocolates in Home Bargains, and some retro biscuits. All fitting perfectly in my theme of gatherings of my childhood.
Not sure how cheese and wine evenings used to go back in the day, but I couldn’t sleep Saturday night I was so full of cheese.
But the day itself was amazing. And so far so good, no one has the lurgy. Fingers crossed. xx
Having Milly, Sam and Zak over was absolutely wonderful. They haven’t seen our group of friends in two years. So it was really good to be all together again.
Zak was an absolute delight the entire stay. He is extremely funny. He has such a fantastic sense of humour, but more than anything I admire his ability to enjoy life in the moment.
Oh to be 2.
We were playing with the dolls house and castle, having a fine old time. He turned to me and said “Nana, I’m so happy!”
This is the second time he’s done this. He did it last time he was up too.
Oh my god, he melts me. But he also inspired me to be more Zak. I’m naturally a very happy, grateful person (Mainly because I can’t believe how good life turned out. I often think I’m dreaming). But I’m definitely going to notice the fun I’m having, when I’m having it. I’m going to step back and see and feel it in the moment. New life goal - be more Zak!
;)
*funny story. Last May we booked to go on a ski holiday this month.
Then in December the UK government changed the rules (again) to say that everyone had to pcr test to come into the UK.
Well I really didn’t fancy getting a positive result, whilst still being in Bulgaria. And then being stuck there to isolate, nor did Chris.
So we heavy hearts we cancelled the holiday on 30th December.
Then on 6th Jan, the UK government changed the rules (again), so now people coming in don’t have to do a pcr before they arrive here.
Which meant we’d cancelled for nothing.
…so I contacted our lovely travel agent (Jane Sheffield of Travel Counsellors, she is on Facebook) and asked to go re book our cancelled holiday…which she did!!
So we will be heading to the slopes of Bulgaria after all. Chris will be hurtling down mountains, whilst I shall be sitting up them drinking hot chocolates.
Xx
I just remembered Kaitlyn very kindly offered to filter a photo for me a couple of years ago. And I do think we can all agree, the results were incredible! :)
