Self Image and the Ostomate
I treasure the story of how I met my darling husband! We were not much older than children…I was at the precipice of becoming a young lady, just weeks before my 15th birthday, while Bruce had just turned 16. We met at a youth organization dance, and he walked across the room to ask me to dance. Later, he would confess he had never approached a girl he didn’t know to dance. When I returned home that night, so many years ago, I told my mother, Lillian, about him.
Over two and a half years ago, after 22 abdominal surgeries and countless bowel obstructions, my surgeon and I took a big step…a surgery that resulted in the formation of an ileostomy. Many of you have never heard of this procedure, and so I would like to educate you a bit. There are three types of ostomies or stomas, which divert either stool (a colostomy or ileostomy) or urine (an urostomy) from the organs nature gave us to do so. Without getting too complicated, an ileostomy is created to enable stool from the small intestine, which is the squiggly organ housed within the abdomen, to leave the body into a “bag” or a pouch that adheres to an appliance secured on the belly.
Recently I was out for dinner and ran into a woman I had not seen since college, several decades ago. Naturally, we have both changed in many ways, yet her eyes were so familiar and as we traveled back in time, my mind wandered to what she must remember of me.
I only attended Emerson College in Boston for two years, suffering from a disorder that at that time had no identifiable name. Today it is called anorexia nervosa. If only she knew the hell that I and so many like me have endured, and the long-lasting effects anorexia and its counterpart bulimia have had on so many aspects of my life. Whereas anorexia destroys the body and brain, bulimia destroys the ego, the sense of self-worth, the soul.