Welcome Back

The six weeks with my new friend the ileostomy moved past me as fast as the summer had.  My summer sucked to say the least.  It wasn’t one I would want to repeat.  The time came for me to go back to the hospital to have the ileostomy taken out.  That meant I would get to use my wonderful, new small intestine rectum.  I had no idea what to expect and I was pretty clueless about what it would be like and the number of issues it would create for me over my lifetime.  I didn’t have any anxiety about going back.  I just wanted to get it over with.  I was crossing my fingers that nothing stupid happened and that I would only be in the hospital for a week or less.

I didn’t have to endure the ridiculous colon cleansing preparation like I had in the past.  Now I was colon-less.  When you don’t have a colon, food moves through you very quickly.  The colon is like a shit storage house.  After your small bowel has sucked out all the nutrients from the food, it moves the waste to your large intestine, or colon, where it removes water (to recycle back into your blood stream) and allows the food waste to sit and rot and come out at the proscribed time.  This is the most efficient way for a mammal to operate.  But when your colon is gone, your poo can't have the water removed, it becomes very loose and as such, it comes out more often whether you like it or not. 

So, I didn’t have to starve for three days this time, instead it was only one day.  However, the medical staff decided to give me an enema through my ileostomy when I got to the hospital.  That was an interesting experience and it wasn’t that effective.  They must not have realized that the food I ate was usually completely gone from my body within six hours.  There was nothing to irrigate out.  This time in the hospital, I was taken upstairs to a different floor from the one I was on during my first stay.  I was relieved that I didn’t have to be there again.  There were too many bad memories there.  I would miss the nurses I loved downstairs, but I felt good about the new surroundings. 

The time came for my surgery and I wasn’t a bit scared when I went into the OR.  I knew how everything worked.  Just before taking me to the OR, the anesthesiologist came into my room and explained to me what he would be doing.  I stopped him and said “I know how it goes.  This isn’t my first time you know.”  I remember him looking at me thinking “you little smart ass.”  He pretty much ended his spiel at that point and got down to business.  My surgery wasn’t too long, just a few hours or less.  All they had to do was release my small bowel that had been sewn to the outside of my skin, pull it out a bit, cut the small bowel where the opening was and sew the two ends together.  Then they stuff the bowels back in the hole where the ostomy was and sew you back up.  Viola.  Done.

When I woke up, I wasn’t in much pain.  I was pleasantly surprised.  I had another NG tube, but it wouldn't hang around for long.  A few days later, my bowels started to move and it was time to start drinking and eating again.  Things were progressing well and I was a little nervous to see what it would be like when all the food I was beginning to eat made its maiden voyage through my jerry-rigged rectum. 

Well, I didn’t have to wait long for the shit to start hitting the fan, almost literally.  No sooner would I eat, the poo would be flowing.  My poor, new rectum.  It was just a small bowel pre-programmed to move things along to the colon, but now it had been given a big job it wasn’t cut out for.  It didn’t like it one bit.  It was working, but I wouldn’t say it was happy about it.  Very rapidly, the skin around my anus and on my bottom became broken down and raw.  Every time I had to go number 2, which was every few hours, I would dread it touching my bottom because it felt like acid burning my butt.  My surgeon ordered for some kind of diaper rash cream, but it didn’t do jack.  It was worthless.  After a day or two of my skin feeling like it was on fire when I toileted, our neighbor came to visit me and while he was visiting I was moaning about the pain coming from my raw behind.  She explained to him what happened to my skin from my excessive bowel movements and he said “Well, you need some bag balm.”  What was that?  He had grown up on a farm and his family always used bag balm for diaper rash, skin chaffing, and lots of other skin ailments.  It’s a salve that was made for use on the teats of a nursing cow, as their utters often become extremely raw.  People figured out it works just as well on humans.

Our neighbor Fred was so kind that he left immediately and walked across the street to the pharmacy and got a jar of bag balm for me.  He returned in ten minutes with the miracle salve and within seconds I felt relief.  The bag balm was amazing and our neighbor had saved the day.  It meant so much to me that he had done this, just to help my little tush feel better.  It seems like such a small detail, but I have always remembered how kind and benevolent that simple gesture was.  A neighbor who I wasn’t even that close with saw me suffering, knew how to help, and acted on it.  There are so many wonderful and kind people all over the world who do the right thing without a second thought.  There are little things we can do every day to make someone’s life better, like something as simple as opening the door for someone just to be kind or sending something thoughtful to someone who is going through a really tough time.  Just letting people know you see them, you notice them, and you care about their feelings means so much to so many people.  But it’s not just them who feel your love, you yourself will feel the love too.

My surgeries to that point were awful for me, but there were several people – family friends, neighbors, and of course lots of nurses – who had gone out of their way to do something big or small to help me feel better.  Those people are real heroes to me.  In spite of all the negative things, the physical pain and the painful feelings that I went through that summer, what always stands out to me in my mind is the gestures of loving kindness, not the agony and despair of my disease.  As Virgil said, love conquers all.