Just A Sight.

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There's one way to wake up that I absolutely hate. It means I have massive anxieties surrounding sleeping anywhere other than my own bed, and anything other than alone. Because when I'm asleep I can't stop my bag from leaking. I can't know until I've woken up.

Every single morning the very first conscious movement I make is to put my hand on and around my stoma bag, to check if it's leaked. I'd say about 5% of the time it has, and that doesn't seem like much, but that's over once a month. It's not always massive pools of poop everywhere, sometimes it's just started to leak and I can rush to the bathroom and sort it out before it's got anywhere. But not always. So here is a photo that I wished never to show anybody ever, because I'm ashamed of it. But then I reminded myself that I'm not doing it on purpose, it's nothing I can avoid, and at least I'm a-fucking-live. 
So this is my mattress. Covered in stains. It's not a pretty sight. But it's also not a disgusting one. It's just a sight. If my stoma bag leaks enough to leave a stain on my bed, then I get a bucket of hot water, pour some washing powder into it and scrub the mattress, towel dry it, and then leave sheets off of it to dry. So it's clean. It's not covered in faeces. It's just stained from something unavoidable. 

The first few years of having a stoma, whenever this would happen I'd sit and cry for hours and be utterly ashamed of myself. I'd find it difficult to even tell my parents, and would instead just hint at what had happened and then snap at them whilst saying I didn't want to talk about it. Now I swear at Sam and then get on with my day. Because it honestly isn't a big deal. But I'm still convincing myself of that, I think. Because it's so hardwired into us that poo is a bad thing. But it's not, it's just a thing.

On the plus side, it does mean I keep on top of my washing. Before this I'd have probably waited several months between changing my bed sheets. So that's nice. But seriously, this post is the one that still worries me the most, but at the same time, if it worries me, then maybe it's worrying somebody else with a stoma too. And in that case, fuck my anxieties. It's not an issue. It doesn't take anything away from me as a person, nor does it anybody else. The only thing the stains on my mattress show is each time I've got up and carried on with my day regardless of the blood on my skin, the pain when I move, and the deep routed fear that it's going to leak again during the day. Because there's no such thing as getting out of the wrong side of the bed, if you've got out of bed, then you've got something to be happy about still. Thanks, Sam 👊

Love and shit x

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