Manbag#5 – The New Year addition

Christmas, a food and drink bingefest – well for once I was restrained, mainly on the drink side, restricting myself to a couple of drinks each day. But I had a little bit of everything, except Brussels Sprouts, but that was nothing to do with my stoma, I just hate sprouts. It’s Saturday and we have just had the traditional Reynolds family turkey stew and dumplings, this is my sixth straight day of Turkey in one form or another but it’s all gone now. No more turkey for another 12 months.

Moving on to New Year, for once I have set myself a goal for the year. I don’t normally bother with goals, you just set yourself up for failure, but this year is different. My aim is to keep myself as fit as possible, look after my stoma, to give myself the best chance possible for a reversal in the next 12 – 18 months.

I was going to have the actual reversal as a target but my stoma nurse told me not to do that. Why? Because all though there is a better than evens chance that it can be reversed that means there is also a slightly less than evens chance that it can’t be reversed. If you concentrate on the reversal then you are setting yourself up for a possible failure.

So, that’s my goal, being in the best shape I can be for a possible reversal.

In terms of getting back to fitness I have been doing longer walks, I’m not walking much further than before but instead of 5/6 chunks of short walks I am doing 2 longer walks a day. So far, so good, a bit problematic with a normal bag attached but it’s about picking a ‘quiet’ time when my bowels are relaxing rather than in full on ‘production’ mode.

A lot of the walking was to the GP’s, chasing the prescription approval for the convex bags, it finally came through on Friday. A brief web chat with the supplier then indicated that it could be another four days before I received them, but with New Years Day that could be five days – a quick re-calibration of supplies allowed me to get through New Year with my remaining convex bags.

One thing I have discovered is my First Law of Colostomy – it doesn’t matter how you try to manage it, it will be quiet until you are about to do something at which point it will go in to full production mode. Obviously my first law of colostomy is just a corollary of Sod’s Law.

We had some friends around the other evening, it had been as quiet as a church mouse until they arrived, then it started farting away like a colliery brass band. All that was missing was Terry Wogan singing The Floral Dance! (For those of you under 45 or not living in the UK you’ll just need to google that.)

I do have a colostomy dilemma, my first but almost certainly not my last. My guilty pleasure was reading on the loo, and I was ¾’s of the way through ‘England’s Dreaming – The Sex Pistols & Punk Rock’, which is really a social history of mainly a pre-gentrified London in the seventies. Now post op I only use the loo in standing up mode. So, do I continue to read the book until the end? Or, do I wait until after my reversal and finish it when I am back to using the loo in sitting mode?

Food Event of the Week – Christmas Dinner, Mince Pies with Brandy butter and Christmas cake

Crap event of the week – still managing my leaks and a limited supply of convex bags

Food non event of the week – Big chunks of starchy carbs don’t really work for me – so no roast potatoes with the Christmas Dinner

Highlight of the week – A late text from my supplier saying my convex bags will be delivered on Tuesday!!

Drink event of the week – going to the pub twice!

Wishing you all the best for 2018.

Thanks for reading

Col