Sweet relief

March 23, 2009

Relief is a bittersweet thing. You are keenly aware of the suffering that you experienced that brought you to this place, but the suffering is no longer there. I feel relief well up inside me and it almost brings me to tears. I don’t know what’s happened, and I’m not going to ask too many questions, but I feel like I am on the other side now. I’ve had at least a week now of feeling good constantly. No pain, no exhaustion, just feeling good. It’s hard for me to even think about what I’ve come through. I don’t want to remember. I want to just move on now. But I can’t forget.

Being with my dad and Barbara this weekend reminded me of the last time I was with them together. They had come to Tucson in December to celebrate Christmas with us. I had apparently been developing a peristomal infection (that means an infection on my skin near my stoma – the stoma was the part of my intestine that stuck out of my stomach and emptied into a bag that was attached to my stomach with adhesive). Because of the infection, my ostomy bag wouldn’t stick to my skin. My bag had fallen off four or five times in the day. And when we couldn’t get a new bag attached, the output (bile and stool) from my stoma ended up running onto my skin. It was acid on an open wound.


Jeremy and I didn’t know what to do. I was laying in bed, writhing in pain, moaning and yelling when the bile would run onto the open sores on my stomach. Jeremy was e-mailing and on the phone with our ostomy nurse, trying to find out from her what we should do. My dad and Barbara helped by bringing me wet paper towels to wipe off my stomach with. I ended up in the hospital that weekend. It was during that stay that Dr. T arrived on scene and said she could do my ostomy take-down surgery right then so I wouldn’t have to deal with the bags any more. Relief. Sweet relief. How do you forget something like that? That was some intense physical pain.

Again, I’m aware of what it must have been like for Jeremy and my dad and Barbara to see me in so much pain not be able to do much to help me. I wonder if I’ll ever stop being grateful for how I feel now. Part of me hopes that I will, because that would mean I have moved on in some respects. Part of me thinks I will never stop being grateful.

What will become of all of this? This could not have happened for no reason (pardon the double negative). Or do we make the reason?

And the depression too; I am feeling relief from the depression. I am seeing beauty in the world. I feel hope for the future – for my future. Can you believe that? Sweet relief.