ON MY WALK YESTERDAY I ran into Dr. Adze, the surgeon who did my ileostomy. “I thought you were dead,” I told him. “No, I just quit doing surgeries,” he said, “because it was beginning to get to me.” “How do you mean?” I asked. “Well, the stress, you know, and you had to be so precise wielding a scalpel.” “You sure did a job on me,” I said, but I could tell from his lack of reaction that he didn’t catch my double meaning. “So, did you just retire?” I asked him. “No, I went to work with my brother the butcher. He had a nice wholesale meat business.” “At least you were in a related profession,” I offered, adding, “although I guess meat cleavers took some getting use to after scalpels.” “I felt free, actually,” admitted the doc. “I could chop away, and I didn’t have an anesthesiologist and a surgical nurse peering over my shoulder all the time.” “Big difference between a dead steer and a live person, huh?” “Not as much as you’d think,” he admitted ruefully. “That’s the beauty of anesthesia.” “I wish I’d been under anesthesia when you yanked all that bandaging off my belly the next week. I think I cleared the bed.” “Sorry about that,” he said, “but doing it slowly just prolongs the agony.” We reached a corner where he was turning and I was going straight. “Are you still cutting meat?” I asked him. “No, that finally got to me too. So I made a big decision.” “What was that?” I asked. “I became a vegetarian.”
By looking at her, you’d never know my surgeon cuts people in half and puts them back together again.
MeetAnOstoMate is a remarkable community of 41,410 members.
“I found real people, real humor, and answers I couldn’t get anywhere else.”
“The support here impressed my husband’s medical team - they plan to recommend it.”
“This community saved me when I thought I was a freak. Now I’m thriving.”
“Thank god for this site - I finally knew what to ask my surgeon.”
Hi Crossley. Ya know, I think it’s all about feelings. I don’t mean the pain feelings which could control everything. I mean the feelings inside our heads, our hearts and even our souls. I mean the feelings of who we are now compared to who we were; how we accept our situation or maybe we don’t. My wife asked how I felt and I said, “like crap”. She asked what hurt and I answered, “Nothing hurts, well, everything hurts, I don’t know, It all sucks.” That was a long time ago. You question if your feelings are normal. How normal is it to relocate your butt hole to your belly where it’s usually in the way of your belt and, you know. But that’s where we are and for lots of us we are so much better off than we were before, physically. Emotionally, psychologically, well, that might be a different story. I believe talk therapy is wonderful if we could find a real empathic or sympathetic listener. So guess what! I found MAO and began “talking” with a keyboard with some of the wisest, kindest most sympathetic and compassionate folks on the planet. Regardless of where we’ve been, lots of folks here have been there and worse places and found their way back healthier and happier. We really do help each other.
Keep “talking”,
Mike
You gotta have a certain type of personality to do that for a living, whatever that is. I guess it's better than being a coroner.
Learn more about ostomy accessories, and when to use them.