I remember back to when my life used to be a lot different without the addition of my stoma. Back in 2006, before I had to undergo my ostomy, I was living life at the top of my game. I spent my days working hard, making money, and doing just about anything I wanted to. I worked at an Amazon warehouse for a long time before finally leaving that job behind. The Amazon warehouse paid me decent money, but the hours were long and the work was extremely monotonous. On top of that, I didn’t much like the work culture there because it felt like my managers only wanted to make more money and didn’t care about me as a person or how I was feeling. Since that was a huge issue for me and had a big impact on my mental health, I decided to leave that job behind and pursue my ultimate passion for hiking. I started to hike all different kinds of trails along the Appalachian mountains, and eventually started to take part in rock climbing and bouldering. Everyone warned me that I should never go rock climbing by myself, but I didn’t listen because I thought I knew better than them.
Unfortunately, I experienced a terrible rock climbing accident that caused a lot of health complications for me. My ribs were completely shattered and ended up splintering into my internal organs and all that. I barely was able to survive, and had to undergo countless surgeries in which the surgeons struggled to simply keep me alive. Obviously, I did end up making it through this awful time, but I am sad to say that I am now what I refer to as an ostomate.
That’s right, I now have to wear an ostomy pouch at all times. Life with a stoma is a huge adjustment, and I don’t think anyone can be fully prepared for what life will be like when you can’t poop or pee anymore. It took a long time for me to even get over my depression of having a stoma, let alone being able to function well with it. Luckily I didn’t have to work because I was on disability due to my accident and being completely out of commission, but I definitely had to work on adjusting to living with a stoma and trying to find reasons to live again.
I think the biggest thing about trying to live life with a stoma is getting used to ordering and applying various ostomy supplies. It takes some time to get used to changing the ostomy pouch and all that, so that was definitely a big adjustment for me. When I was finished recovering from surgery in the hospital and was cleared to start the rest of my recovery from home, the doctors ran me through a lot of the ostomy supplies that I would use and taught me how to use it properly. They also sent me home with a lot of different ostomy supplies to help make the next few weeks with my stoma a bit easier. Since then, however, I have had to find ways to order my own ostomy supplies, and it can be a bit difficult to find the brands and specific products that work best for me. However, I feel confident that I have found the right supplies for me.
Ostomy Basics 