This year marks three decades into my life and half a decade into my ostomy adventure, and here I am, alive, active and working to be my best me. My 5th Stomaversary is this month, and if the math wasn’t there to prove it, I’d have a hard time believing that I’ve lived with my ostomy for 1,825 days.
As I aim to do every year around my stomaversary, I’ve been reflecting on who I am and who I was, where I am and where I was. Sometimes, I play a game with myself where I try to imagine where I would be in life if I hadn’t had a need for an ostomy. I pretend that instead of completely beating my colon up to the point of removal, my Ulcerative Colitis would have just continued at the same intensity it had been going at in the years leading up to my surgery. I ponder where I would be mentally, emotionally, and physically, and where I would be living, what I would be doing, and who I would be surrounding myself by.
What I find to be so interesting about this exercise, is how relieved I am when I realize that I get to go down the path I’m on now, instead of the one I had been on before. I am proud of my journey and know that I am who I am because of the experiences I’ve had, especially the ones surrounding my struggle with Ulcerative Colitis and the need for an ostomy. In those moments of struggle, frustration, sadness, and loss, my perspective on life began to shift and I realized I wanted to change.
I chose to focus on living my life, not letting myself be held back by my comfort zone or fears. It’s not like a switch flipped and I was suddenly a different person, consistently making wildly different decisions than I would have before surgery, and it’s not like I’m there 100% of the time, but there’s definitely been a shift.
It’s been a wild five years and it’s kind of fun to look back on how drastically my life has changed (and also how it hasn’t!). I’ve gone from crazy anxious about everything ostomy to the point where I was holding myself back from enjoying life out of fear, to recognizing when I’m feeling anxious about doing something because of having an ostomy, acknowledging it, and then choosing push forward and do it anyway (within reason).
We don’t have any control over what happens to us in life, but we can absolutely control how we react to it. Having an ostomy has challenged me to reassess my status quo. It has given me the opportunity to really look at and embrace my values and priorities, and it has given me a life I couldn’t have imagined.
How long have you had your ostomy? Do you do anything special to celebrate your stomaversary?