A leak-free pouch and a leaky pouch. Oy!

Some happy news first! I had my pouchogram yesterday to "determine the integrity" of my J-Pouch. It's basically a short procedure where they take a lot of x-rays of your J-Pouch to see if there are any leaks (you wouldn't want poo escaping from it's designated pathways and swimming around your body!). The x-rays showed that my J-Pouch is leak-free and that means I'm another step closer to reconnection surgery! March 21 is my surgery date if all continues to go well. Wahoo!

This next part is about my ostomy pouch (external, covers the stoma), not to be confused with the J-Pouch (internal reservoir made of my small intestine). I enjoyed a nice 2 week stretch without any ostomy pouch leaks, but, unfortunately, I've had several leaky incidents in the last week. It's really the grossest thing and if anyone's interested, I'm happy to share the details with you, but I'll spare you all right now :) The leaks are especially frustrating because I didn't make any changes to my lifestyle or eating habits, so I have no idea why I'm suddenly leaking. I saw the ostomy nurse yesterday and got yet another pouch to try, so we shall see. Since my stoma is temporary, I just have to hang in there. Five.more.weeks. As I've mentioned in a previous post, the leaking also causes skin irritation. That has been really painful, sometimes even making it difficult to fall asleep.

Here's the weird thing: it seems that the pain and the challenges give me focus and help me stay centered. Recently, during those 2 weeks with minimal difficulties, I started to feel restless and some old negative narratives I tell myself were coming back. When I deal with medical crises, my world is smaller and simpler and I don't have time or energy to deal with the excess garbage that fills our days and minds.

However, I know that I don't want to live in that small world of constant pain. The truth is that more than anything I am doing all of these medical treatments and taking care of myself because I know that being disease-free will allow me to take on my next challenge: squashing those negative narratives. In reality, I want to be restless because then I will be pushed to venture outside of my comfort zone. I will have the physical energy and I will feel safe. I don't want to stay in that confined space of focusing all my energies on getting by, instead I want to move forward! But I also want to continue being centered and keeping things simple. Maybe the trick to this conundrum is to not become complacent. I can already see how easy it is to take health and opportunity and options for granted. So the question becomes, how do we hold pain and suffering near to us, motivating us to be our best selves and keeping us grounded, without actually experiencing the pain?






Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 15, 2017 at 9:59 PM

    Glad to hear your J pouch has integrity,I always knew you were one of the good ones ;-) Hang in there sista!!

    ReplyDelete

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