The Adventures Of Samwise

That's one of my favourite quotes. It's from The Old Man And The Sea by Hemingway. It kind of sums up how I feel. I often get told that I have such bad luck. That's usually accompanied by a sorrowful look, a head tilt and a soft voice. I know that people mean well. I really really do get that. But I find it so offensive anyway. Because I don't possibly understand why anyone could think that I have bad luck. I kind of get where they're coming from in terms of "oh wouldn't it be better if you didn't have any of this!!!" But quite frankly, no. I am me and I am perfect like this. I am broken and I am faulty and I am happy and I love it. This is me. Healthy is not. That is okay. I don't need your interpretation of luck, because I have my own. I should definitely be dead by now, that is a fact. I am not, that is also a fact. So how that can make me anything other than lucky, I have no idea. People assume that lucky would be to be like them, and t...

I'm sat in bed right now with my big pup snoring next to me and my four rats sitting munching their dinner and I'm very proud of myself. Because today, I did completely ordinary and mundane stuff that I would usually do every single day, and I did it all without crying once. That's a big deal. So there's this weird thing, that I'm sure I'm not the only one who experiences. Where once I come out of hospital (oh, spoiler: been in hospital again) I struggle.  Even washing. You have no idea how exhausted you can be until you have to have a lay down after having a quick shower. By which time you need to shower again because you're too sweaty. None of this is helped by my brain. It dislikes me as much as my body does sometimes. At the moment, the levels of anxiety I have are some of the highest they've been for a very long time, if not ever. But I'm still smashing it. So yesterday morning I was talking to one of my favourite family friends. Someone who...

This post is intended to be much more positive and happy than some of my others may have turned out. As the overall idea for this blog was 🌞🌞🌞  HAPPINESS🌞🌞🌞  Because there's little point in dwelling in any other emotions for longer than you absolutely must. Having a stoma bag fitted is often compared to death. That sounds pretty extreme, so I should definitely expand before anyone reading this who may have to have one has mass panic attacks. It's compared to death because of the five stages of grief. They apply here too. They apply to any life changing scenarios, and just like in any other life changing scenarios, you will refuse to accept that you are going through them until you reach the final and longest one. Although that may just be me, as I'm pretty stubborn. (There you go, Mom, I admitted it.) For anyone that doesn't know the five stages of grief, or anyone who needs a handy little diagram to hold up next to their loved ones face to determine what stag...

Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity Above is a link to one of the most important charities in my life. This is the hospital that repeatedly saved my life, and asked nothing in return. This is the hospital that continues to care for me, that gives me small home comforts when away from home, that literally does everything from keeping me breathing to helping me go to the toilet (in more ways than one). So it's fair to say I am grateful. Now, it may not seem vital what they do, as what they provide isn't healthcare  as such, it is wellbeing care and research and equipment. It's no secret that the NHS is struggling, just as it is no secret that it saves lives every single day.  But that's something for a different post, as I have an awful lot to say about the NHS, and everything we take for granted. So anyway, for the NHS to run and continue to save lives, it has to do just that, focus on saving lives. Meaning that often when you're in hospital, things that ...

So the last few days my lungs have been kind of hurting. At first it was like "oh that's irritating", which not so slowly progressed into "oh shit I can't breathe". So I did what I always do. I went to my all knowing font of knowledge. My big sister, Hope. She's an A&E Doctor and by far the smartest one in the family, so if she tells me to do something, I do it. She told me to go to A&E, so I did, because even if she's miles away I feel she'd still slap me if I didn't. As anyone who regularly visits hospital will know, you never go to an A&E without packing at least an overnight bag and something to do in the waiting room, that's just silly. Conveniently, my brand new backpack arrived that morning, so that was cool. My Mom seemed less impressed with how excited I was to use it than I was. Something about it being more important that I breathe. Now I know I wasn't well, because I kept coming kinda close to passing out o...

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...

Somebody I know messaged me and suggested that I write a post about the symptoms of Crohn's Disease, because if I'd have known them when I was younger then there's every chance I wouldn't have got this ill. And isn't the entire point of this blog to raise awareness anyway? So, here goes. This is every symptom I've ever experienced, what it felt like, how long it lasted, and anything else I can think that might help anybody, at all. I'd like to point out, that my symptoms were massively severe, as I have a really bad case. Not everyone will experience stuff to this degree. So when I was 11, I poo'd like, constantly.   Obviously I didn't just wake up one day and suddenly have to go 30 times. It was a gradual development. Which is what makes you get used to it, think it's more normal than it is. This is going to get descriptive. So it's not just a runny poo. Occasionally it's a runny poo. With blood and mucus in it. But after the 5th one...