Two Weeks Later...

Well it's been two weeks since surgery and things are going okay. I'm sleeping A LOT. It's nice to have uninterrupted sleep the past few days now that I'm not on pain meds all the time. My sleep schedule is still wacky because I don't really have any responsibilities but it's nice to just lay in bed and not have your bowels telling you to wake up.

I've been having a few issues with my ostomy itself but that's probably from losing a little bit of weight. Anytime there's a fluctuation with your size, it affects your stoma a lot. Before surgery I had finally gotten to a point where I was never having leaks or needing to change my appliance a lot because I just knew my stoma. I know it'll just take some more time before things settle down again and I have it under control. But I'd like to stress these minor hiccups are preferable to anything Crohn's-related.

Otherwise my stoma is the same and my surgeon didn't even have to change anything about it. I kind of wish she did, though. From my understanding she folded the part of my intestine behind my stoma so that instead of being a "loop ileostomy" mine is now an "end ileostomy". You know how before surgery I was having problems with my output bypassing my stoma? Well, now there's no pipes left for it to travel down so everything is forced out of my stoma for lack of an alternative route.

My wounds are healing nicely and I don't really have any pain anymore. The most troublesome and irritating thing right now is dealing with the drain I still have. There's stitches around the part where the drain meets my skin, so naturally it is a little bit uncomfortable when I sit on it. Also, just the whole part of needing to carry this damn drain around every where I go is still very annoying. Every once in a while I let it fall to the ground and it pulls on the stitches and hurts. Luckily the drainage has slowed down significantly so I should definitely have it removed when I see the surgeon on Thursday. Hopefully I'll be cleared to drive then, too!

All in all everything has been how I expected. There's been some rough moments I will admit. Honestly I think a lot of it has to do with pain meds. There were a few nights where I was just emotional because everyone in the house would be asleep and I was just...uncomfortable. Nothing a little time with my mom didn't help.

I've also been thinking a lot about the emotional adjustment of knowing you're going to live with an ostomy forever. When I was in the hospital my GI came to see me and wanted someone to come talk to me. A social worker or therapist or something...And I just wanted to explain how not everyone is a wreck after this. I've been emotionally preparing for a year and for me, the tears and "why me" are way behind. I don't know. It's a whole other topic for another time.

In short, I'm doing great. I have my days. I'm tired a lot. But you know what? Every day is getting easier. I'm excited.