MOST PEOPLE GO THROUGH LIFE dreading that something bad will happen to them. You and I have had our trauma, and that belly attachment that we wear won’t ever allow us to forget it. We deal with it, since we have no choice. We do battle with the shock of it at first, some kind of foreign creature that has fastened upon us like a barnacle on a turtle’s shell. It may have saved our life, but it did so in a rude, abrasive way, leaving us to figure out an unfamiliar new way of life, something so unthinkable, even unimaginable, that it can take a long number of months for recovery to set us on an even keel again. We bring all our available strength to bear on regaining some sense of normality, to rejoining the human race that, at first, we were afraid that we’d left. We develop a technique, two techniques, actually: one, the physical necessity of tending to our new need; the other, the psychological machinations we go through to insure survival with some acceptable level of dignity. Finally, we arrive at that point where we become acceptable to the one observer who most needs that acceptance: ourselves. Then we realize that we’re going to be okay, that the creature has been tamed, put on a leash, domesticated. The trauma has been overcome, mundane needs reassert themselves, routine regains its rightful place. Life goes on.

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Hollister
Ostomy surgery is stressful both for the patient and the caregiver, and creates a major life change for both people in a relationship.
Learn how to care for your loved one, while still taking care of yourself.
Learn how to care for your loved one, while still taking care of yourself.