Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

More on “The Bag”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, obviously. These latest posts aren’t necessarily for my regular readers or the people who know me personally. I guess I’m hoping to reach out to people considering the prospect of a colostomy or an ileostomy who might be freaked out about it. I want those people to know there’s nothing to worry about.

A lot of people have colostomy-dread because their information is outdated. That’s easy to understand. A lot has changed for colostomates in the past 30 years. I met someone with a colostomy at some point back when I was a little kid (so we’re talking at least 40 years ago). I don’t even remember who it was. A great aunt? A friend of a great aunt? At any rate, the only thing I remember about the poor woman is that she smelled bad. I must have asked someone about it because I remember being told that she had a colostomy — and what that was. That must be where my own colostomy-dread originated. It’s understandable. Who would want to spend the rest of their life smelling like a cesspool with something like a hot water bottle full of shit strapped to their waist?

Uh, yeah… I don’t think so.

Unfortunately, a lot of people think that’s still how it is. It’s not. Modern ostomy bags are very light-weight plastic, they attach to a person’s skin with special adhesives that keep them in place but that don’t hurt you when it’s time to change the bag out. And there’s not a smell anymore. (Of course it smells when you empty the bag — just as it would smell if you were pooping in the normal way!) It’s not like it used to be. You can wear normal clothes. It’s truly just not that big a deal!

Some of you younger people might be thinking, “Oh sure, Rebecca. You can say that because you’re old and married and you don’t have to care anymore about what you look like naked. There’s no way — NO WAY — having a bag of shit stuck to your abdomen is NOT going to affect your ability to score.” Hey, there are always going to be people (amusingly enough, I usually refer to them as “assholes”) for whom the appearance of your body is going to be the most important thing about you. Is that really the kind of person you want to get involved with, though? It’s not like there aren’t ways to accomodate having a bag. Lots of wonderful, creative people have come up with special clothes and such — check out the women’s underwear here, for example. They’re high-waisted, have a pocket on the inside where the woman’s pouch can be secured, and they’re crotchless! They’re NOT ugly or pathetic. They’re sexy — and a little kinky — in a good way!

What normal man would NOT be turned on by a woman wearing that underwear??

Just because a person has an ostomy, it doesn’t mean they can’t be hot.

Well, anyway… I suppose I’m going off on a bit of a tangent here. I just can’t help but feel it’s really important for people to understand that having any ostomy isn’t the horrible thing they might think it is.

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By the way, if you do click on the underwear link above, be aware that the woman modeling the underwear is, herself, an ostomate! That round disk outline you can see on her abdomen through the panties? That’s the flange for her pouch. That’s not so bad now, is it?

Bag Lady

Maybe you’re thinking, Come on, Rebecca! You don’t even have an ileostomy anymore! Enough with “the bag” already!” And, I’m sure that as time goes on, I’ll think less and less about what it was like to have an ileostomy. That time is not yet here, though.

This is true. When I was a kid and would think about what would be the absolutely worst thing that could happen to me (hey, I was a morbid child), I thought that having a colostomy would be it. I’m telling you the truth. Blindness, deafness, being paralyzed and maybe spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair — all those sounded do-able. Beautifully, sadly, romantic almost! But a colostomy?? Oh my god. No. There was no way a colostomy could ever be anything except the absolute worst and most humiliating thing that could happen to a person.

I’ve been surprised to find that attitude is common even now, even among adults. I was telling my surgeon about my childhood colostomy-dread and she mentioned that she knows adults — some of them even doctors! — who would rather be dead than have a colostomy. Get this: when I was in the hospital this last time, my second roommate was a lady who’d been inpatient for about a month after the wound from colon surgery she’d had had become infected. We were exchanging medical stories, like people do when they’re hospital roommates, and when she asked, I confirmed that yes, indeed, I had had “the bag”. Later, I overheard her telling the nurse: “I guess I should be grateful I’ve only had this infection to deal with. That woman in the next bed had to have a bag.”

As unbelievably crazy as it now seems to me, every year people are literally dying because they’re either too embarrassed about their normal bodily functions to get a colonoscopy — or they’re so misinformed or weirded out about their bodily functions that they refuse to have life-saving surgery that would result in a colostomy or an ileostomy.

How sad is that? Pretty damned sad.

Of course, a certain amount of weirdness over pooping is normal — healthy, even. Whether it’s instinct or taboo, it’s a good thing for us to avoid contact with our own or other people’s body wastes due to the potential for disease and all that. But, come on!! It’s just poop. We ALL produce it. There’s no moral component here. And yet many of us get all weird and shy and squeamish about discussing it. I used to, too! I got over that in a hurry when my health was seriously threatened.

I wish I had some magic words you could use on people to MAKE them realize how NOT a big deal it is to have a colonoscopy. How really NOT terrible it is to have an ostomy.

I think we all just need to loosen up — and get a sense of humor! — about a LOT of things. The workings of our bungholes is just one of them.

Caesar’s Palace

Girl Puts Used Condom In Mouth, Parents Sue – July 18, 2006
Claiming that their young daughter discovered a used condom in a Las Vegas hotel bed and then put the rubber in her mouth, a Scottish couple is suing Caesar’s Palace for negligence and emotional distress.

Fairly often, I’d dismiss “emotional distress” lawsuits as just being so much whining.

But this.

This.

The documents obtained by The Smoking Gun only say the suit seeks “in excess of $10,000″. This is one of those rare situation where I’m thinking maybe ten MILLION dollars isn’t enough.

The Disgruntled Chemist

[The Disgruntled Chemist] George W Bush to logic, science: Fuck You
Thinking people of the world to George W Bush: What the fuck is wrong with you, you simian man-child motherfucker?

I don’t remember how I discovered The Disgruntled Chemist, but he’s now on my daily RSS reading list. Anyone who knows me will be able to tell why from the quote above. What’s not to like?

In this particular entry, the Chemist expresses his disgust over Bush’s recent veto of a stem cell research bill.

It’s been a while since I explained my whole idea about stem cell research (and, honestly, it’s continuing to evolve) so I’ll just give a brief run-down right here.

As you know, I’m a vegetarian. (If you didn’t know that, well… I’m a vegetarian.) I’ve been a vegetarian for over 30 years. I’m one of those “ethical” vegetarians — I do it (or don’t do it) because I believe that killing unnecessarily is wrong. Most humans don’t need to eat meat in order to live healthy lives, ergo, killing animals for those people to eat is a bad thing. (It’s really way beyond “bad”, considering the grotesque efficiency and scale on which it’s done.) My high regard for life extends beyond just killing to eat. I’m also opposed to most abortions and to most animal research.

Inevitably this sort of philosophy inspires people to ask, “Well, what about the malaria-infested mosquito that’s about to bite your arm? Is your regard for life really so high that you wouldn’t slap a bug?” Well… no. Remember that I said I was opposed to unnecessary killing.

All life has value — including my own.

I think it’s unavoidable that people who are trying to develop an all-encompassing, yet still realistic, vegetarian philosophy must put different values on different kinds of life:

• Bugs that die under my feet as I walk around outside — not much value there.
• Fly that gets in the house — more value. I almost never kill those guys. I try to get them to go back outside.

And what about the uncounted creatures who die just as a consequence of the products I use? I try to keep mindful of them and use/buy products that cause less damage. Sometimes, too, the values will shift depending on circumstances. I would never kill a chicken for food today, but if I were trapped, starving, in a room with a stove, a frying pan, and a big fat chicken… well… after a while, I might very well feel different about the value of a chicken’s life.

Well, anyway. So how does all of this relate to stem cell research?

Stem cells (sometimes) come from embryos and embryos are undeveloped life forms. Because they’re alive, I’m philosophically opposed to unnecessarily killing them. (That they’re undeveloped HUMAN lives really has nothing to do with it for me.) There are two big questions that come out of this:

1. Is it necessary to do the killing?
2. What is the relative value of the life that would be taken?

I actually kind of go back and forth on these issues. Some days, the whole embryos-for-stem-cell-research thing feels pretty monstrous to me: just one more example of American society’s general disregard for all life. Other days, I think — jeez, it’s just a blob of undifferentiated cells! In the grand scheme of things, a blob of undifferentiated cells really can’t have that much value.

Mist

Later — But then again… it’s white and misty looking behind the lighthouse, too, so…
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Update/Correction — looking at other “cams” in Duluth, I’m wondering whether what I took to be mist off the lake wasn’t really smoke from a smokestack in front of the cam! Perhaps a resident of Duluth will clarify…
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Very cool images from the ALLETE Lake Cam this afternoon. The temperature has cooled significantly in Duluth and there’s this amazing low mist coming in off Lake Superior. These images, all taken within seconds of one another, show the mist rising off the lake around the light house at the end of the pier by the lift bridge.

Jiggity-Jig

Greetings, People of Earth!

(Yes, yes… I know that’s silly. I just felt like saying it, okay?)

I am, indeed, home again, home again! I got out of the hospital at about 6 pm last night. This time I was in the hospital…5 days. 5 looooong and booooring days.

As regular readers will recall from previous posts, I had a partial colectomy with placement of temporary loop ileostomy on May 25th. This past Friday — July 14th — my doctor reversed the ileostomy.

While overall things went pretty well, it wasn’t quite as simple as we’d all hoped. I had adhesions around my ileostomy, so the doctor had to do an “open” surgery to free everything up. The new incision is about 4 inches long — horizontal, not vertical — and is being held together by 5 widely spaced staples. I’m getting quite the interesting collection of scars, I tell you!

Anyway… if this sort of thing interests you, I’ve written a long and detailed account of what my reversal surgery has entailed. It’s posted on the UOAA Discussion Board here. I believe anyone can read it there (without having to be a UOAA member), but let me know if you run into problems.

Back In The Saddle Again

This post title would be a whole lot funnier if I were having some kind of gynecological surgery. Anyway…

Here I am! Back in the hospital. I probably won’t be actually posting this to the blog until after I’m already home, but I am writing it from within the hsopital.

On July 14th my surgeon reversed my loop ileostomy. More about that later. At this particular moment, my attention is consumed by something else:

There are times when being an introvert puts in you in a situation that’s more than just unpleasant. Sometimes it can be truly maddening. Really awful.

I’m in the hospital right now as I’m writing this. My roommate is a nice enough person — but she’s apparently a bit of an extrovert and she’s got bunches of friends and family visiting her. It’s pretty much a continual stream of people. It’s not even that the visitors are particularly obnoxious or anything. There’re just so many of them — all the time — talking, talking, talking, talking.

Aaaaaaagggggghhhhh!!!

It’s driving me truly crazy. I’m a person who prefers quiet and when I’m not feeling great to begin with, I REALLY prefer quiet.

I’ve just returned from a trip out wandering the halls. It’s quieter out there. My level of desperation is so great that I even stopped by the nurses’ desk and asked about the visiting rules. Quoth I: “I really don’t want to be a bitch about this. She’s a nice enough person — it’s just a personality difference, I think. I prefer quiet. But, I mean… I understand, it’s her room too.” From the sound of it, she’s not actually breaking any rules or anything. The nurse offered to say something about it to her, but… if my roommate isn’t breaking any rules, I don’t want there to be any bad feelings between us.

This is typical of the kind of thing introverts have to put up with all the time. We generally dislike confrontation of any kind so, inevitably, we wind up giving in to what the extroverts want.

It really sucks.

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Update, a couple days later:

The nurses must have said something to my roommate because now she’s limiting herself to two people at a time and they’re being quieter. I have to admit, I even said at one point “Could you keep it down a bit, please?” when one of her friends started getting especially raucous. The friend said, “Oh, yeah, sorry, sorry…” So… hopefully no particularly hard feelings. I think the roommate was a little annoyed with me for a day but she got over it and became friendly towards me again the day she checked out.

Ah.. “Daytime Drama” in the hospital.

My roommate turned out to be an interesting person. She’s the same age as me and she plays soccer for fun! Like, with regular women’s soccer leagues! Cool! From this we learned that our nurse used to play hockey with the Russian women’s Olympic hockey team! Very cool! We (my roommate and I) suggested to our nurse that she should do some part-time private coaching of kids around the area. With all the rich parents around here whose kids want to play hockey, she could make a fortune coaching.

Heading In for the Night

This one’s for Mark. Just so he’ll see that people really do sail on Lake Superior. These guys must be heading in to docking somewhere in Duluth Harbor after the Wednesday night sailboat races.

Sweetie-Pie Putin

ABC News: Putin Explains Kissing Child’s Stomach
What compelled him to kiss the bare stomach of a young boy in a Kremlin courtyard?

Yeah… I know. This is old news. I didn’t know anything about it, though, until just this morning when I saw Matt Lauer ask Putin about it.

I guess I’m a little surprised people have made such a big deal out of it. When I saw the film, my first thought was “How sweet!” It was just a sweet, loving, fatherly sort of thing to do. Little kids’ tummies are so cute. You just want to kiss them! I like that Putin would do such a thing! It makes me think that beneath that “stern international politician” veneer there lurks the heart of a real pussycat.

You Wouldn’t Think Such An Ignorant Person Would Have Tuned In To PBS

PBS | Ombudsman
I am appalled and outraged that Allah would be mentioned on our Fourth of July celebration to our nation and our beloved country. Stevie Wonder was adorned with an award and then proceeded to thank and profess to Allah. Our men are fighting in Iraq against the Jihad and Allah. We found this very offensive especially on PBS, we are a country founded by God. We are Christians and we have no right to use the word Allah on our national holiday. What a disgrace to our heritage. We are outraged and saddened by these events. We trust that you will address our concerns. Where are our military? They make and deserve our honors, not Stevie Wonder. Where have we gone wrong, yes, turning our back on God and our country.

Angela J. Borland, Phoenix, AZ

Un-fucking-believable.

This is a letter to the PBS ombudsman from a viewer who is unhappy with how the recent Capitol Fourth show was produced. You’ll remember how much I enjoyed the broadcast.

I hardly know how to react to such a display of hateful ignorance except to assure Muslims everywhere that this woman’s attitude is not typical.