When it hits you

I didn't realise how bad off I was after my gut ruptured until I went in a year and a half later for ostomy reversal surgery. The nurses, who were obviously familiar with my file, would casually say that such-and-such would be easier this time around because last time "you were so sick" or "you were really sick" or "you really weren't very well". When a nurse on a surgery unit, who no doubt sees a lot of different kinds of not well, tells you that you really weren't very well, then you can assume that you REALLY weren't very well.

I was lucky, I admit it, but I was also a little confused as to why no one told me how sick I'd been. Maybe they thought that the two days in intensive care and waking up still intubated might have given me a clue?

Well, it's not like I'd ever had that type of experience before, so I guess that maybe it didn't.

As a result, it took that second round of recovery from surgery for me to understand that I had been really sick and, in fact, could have died.

That, my friends, is a weird feeling to deal with.

So what happened when it hit?



Nothing, really. That's the weird part. It's like it was just another thing about my life to file away. On November 22, 2014, I nearly died.

Is that normal, do you think? I mean, it's not like I avoid thinking about it. It just doesn't seem to bother me, or make me want to live life to the fullest, or whatever it is that's supposed to happen to you when you could have died.

I do think about it. I sort of have to. Either that or avoid looking in the mirror, because I have a constant reminder right there. This, by the way, is why there wasn't the usual photo at the top of the post. It's down here, because I realise that not everyone's thrilled about scars and things like that. For those of you who don't mind or don't care, however, just keep scrolling for a look at how I'm healing.

Yep, that's the ostomy scar. For those who don't know what surgical scars look like, the dots are from the staples and will fade. The incision will tighten up a little and contract somewhat. It'll still be significant, though.

It doesn't bother me. I wouldn't be putting it on the internet if it did.

Why should it bother me anyway? It's part of my life. Part of my almost-death. It's an outward sign of an experience that will always be with me, and it needs to be accepted.

I'd be wasting a lot of time on stupidity if I didn't, really.



Aaanyway, there's how things stand. Me'n the scar need to end the post now, so type at you later.

Back in the saddle, sort of. With random photos that have nothing to do with anything.

Bob sits this way by choice, remember.

By the way, these photos really do have nothing at all to do with the blather. Nothing. No false advertising here. Shall we begin?

Back in November of 2014, I was in pain. Lower abdominal pain. I though it was just a nastier than usual period, which sometimes happens as you approach all that menopausal irregularity fun. The problem was, I had an interpreter who hadn't done planetarium for a while and asked me to take her first of two that day so that she could have a review.

That didn't help the pain.

I did it anyway, but asked a coworker if she could watch the second program because I just didn't think that I could handle it.

That night the pain got even worse, and at a certain point in the sleepless night I decided to run a hot bath. It helps a little when I have kidney stone pain. Well, it became obvious as soon as I got in the tub that it wasn't going to work and that something was really wrong. I got dressed and walked to the hospital. Yes, walked. I live close enough that I would have got there well before a cab or a friend would have arrived to pick me up.

Road construction for the new bridge at Dad's place.

 After a longer than necessary wait in an almost empty ER waiting room (I think they figured that it wasn't serious because I walked there. All I know is that I was given an incredibly flimsy excuse when they finally came for me) during which I developed a fever, x-rays basically led to the medical equivalent of OH SHIT when they found gas in my abdomen.

It turned out to be a ruptured diverticulum, and meant emergency surgery, a week in hospital on some pretty heavy antibiotics, and over a year with an ostomy.

Needless to say -- for anyone familiar with mobile planetariums, that is -- I didn't do planetarium for a while.

For those new to the program, I had ostomy reversal surgery at the beginning of April this year. Recovery's been a little harder than I expected, but I'm getting there.

Tom's pose is to remind me that he hates the camera.

This past week I was pulled out of the last day of our Nature School week to do some other programming, including two hours of edible plants and... oh come on, you've guessed... a planetarium program. A program for a youth group that we also used as a training opportunity for a couple of the new interpreters.

Planetarium. First time in over a year and a half. First time since I ruptured. Training. Was I nervous? Not really. I was pretty much too busy being scared to death to be nervous.

But how did it go, Dee? Oh, all right, I suppose. I didn't explode again, which was a good thing. I felt like a bit of a helpless femme because I had to get my interpreters to do most of the heavy lifting (it doesn't hurt very much to lift things now, but I find that I get winded really quickly), but that's partly because I have a hard time accepting help when I should be able to do things myself. As for the program, I guess it was ok. I had a couple of memory lapses, but when it's been over a year since you've used some of the terminology I think that's forgivable.

Back in the planetarium saddle.





I'm not sure if that deserves a YAY! yet or not, to be honest.



I'll let you know.

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I'm going to schedule a few garden photo posts now, since that seems to be the only way I manage to post during the week anymore. Watch this space, as they say.

9 pm thoughts. Posted after 9 pm, of course.

I took a bunch of personal photos when I still had a stoma. It helped me accept the fact that I looked differently from the way I was born. It's not that the stoma ever really bothered me; it helped to keep me alive when my born-with gut couldn't. It was survival, and I was grateful. Honestly. Even with the scars that come with the emergency bowel resection, I was grateful.

I deleted those pictures. I thought that I didn't need them.

I was wrong.

For those new to the blog, I'm currently recovering from an ostomy reversal. It's major surgery, but the end result is "normal" bowel function. No more stoma. I spent over a year collecting faeces in a pouch attached to my waist, but that's done now. Life will be more or less back to normal in a few weeks. That's a good thing.

But man, I wish that I had those photos.

I might have helped people, you see. I could have shown that an ostomy pouch is nothing to be ashamed of (why on earth be ashamed anyway?). I could have shown curious online searchers that a stoma wasn't weird or gross.

The pictures are gone, though.

Damn.

Tonight I took a series of shots --just with the phone -- showing how to apply an ostomy pouch. It was with supplies I won't use now, and I put it over the dressing that still covers my slightly-weepy former stoma site. It was partly out of guilt, yes, but partly because I think that I have some help to give even without a stoma. I may post them on instagram tomorrow if a night's reflection doesn't make them too cringe-worthy, but even if they are I think that I'll save them for a while this time. Just as well.

I don't really want another Damn just now, if that's ok with everyone.

Pointless something or other:

Ok, 'll be honest. I've been sitting here chair dancing to music as I wandered around the internet, and I really haven't even bothered to think of a blather. Here's more yard stuff, then.

I've been making use of the 50 mm prime lens this past week, and while it's obvious that these aren't much more than snapshots they still remind me how much fun it is to use an actual camera instead of a phone. The phone has its place, of course (you NEVER see phone pics here at all, oh no), but no phony filters match up to an SLR. And the bokeh with this lens is just my thing, you know?

I was going to say ok, on with the growing things, but I remembered something else that I wanted to say. I got a surprising amount of views of my incision photo the other day. Idle curiosity for the most part, I know, but it was still nice to see people tuning in all the same. Maybe I'll set up the tripod and take a proper shot once the bandage is off the stoma site, just to be completely informative.

Or gross people out. Whichever.

Ok, now on with the growing things:

Anemone buds

High Bush-cranberry

Raspberry

Rose

European Mountain Ash (Rowan)

Yeah, more Saskatoon. The flower buds are coming in now.

Spruce buds

Pointless Bad Cat photo of the day:

I love how he just poses before I yell at him for being on the table.

Lunch time, but I'll say quickly that yesterday was two more small things in the whole big recovery thing. No more packing in my former stoma site (yay), and I slept in the bed last night rather than the recliner. Comfortable? Not especially, but I did sleep, at least.



Baby steps, I guess.

Later, all.

More Prairie Crocus... and something else

Prairie Crocus, or Pasqueflower, is one of my favourite things in the spring, so I tend to take a lot of photos of them when they come up in the yard. Here's a few (more).

After that there's one more photo that I'll put behind a jump for those of you who are accessing the blog by the home page. For those who came via the post link, just don't scroll all the way down if you're disgusted by bodies for some reason. I'm not, personally, but to each his/her own.

Ok, nice purple flowers:

One non-flower after the jump:

Things in the yard

So, today I got the last of my staples out, Queen Elizabeth II turns 90, and Prince died at 57. You can rearrange those three things in order of importance to you, I suppose.

I'm not in a blathery mood again today, so here's the last of the yard photos I took the other day. Time to go out and get some new ones, I guess.

The Two-spot Ladybird Beetle is a native species here.

The Seven-spot, however, isn't. It was released as biological pest control, and it's the one you see the most of now. Has it become a pest itself? There's still some argument about that.

A bit fuzzy since I had a short lens on, but here's a Red-breasted Nuthatch hiding seeds in the bark of a spruce tree.

Spider!

Was I too quiet?

I was recently contacted via twitter by a group (person? Person trying to form a group?) wondering if I'd be interested, as an ostomate -- well, former ostomate -- in doing some advocacy. I haven't replied because it was a cancer-based group, and my ostomy had nothing to do with cancer. It got me to wondering, though: should I have talked more about ostomy before this reversal operation? I did occasionally, but mostly I didn't feel like constantly seeing myself typing about my stoma.

I did think of posting some photos of it, to be honest. Even took some. Decided that if the world didn't know what a stoma was and what it was for, the world could bloody well google it.

Might it have helped someone if I had talked more about it? There's lots of people out there who do, and there's lots of support for people who want it. I guess for me it went against the grain a bit. For the longest time I kept the blog and my internet self almost as impersonal as you possibly can, because I didn't think it was important to speak out about much of anything. To be honest, I'm still very much that way, and even though I'm around here (on occasion) and on twitter and instagram, I'm certainly not doing it to set the world on fire.

Maybe I should have, though. Maybe I should have posted photos of my stoma and of me wearing a pouch. It's not like it would have bothered me, particularly. I just didn't think it was necessary. Should I post pictures of my surgical scars when things have healed a little more and I'm not a walking ad for steri-strips (most of the staples are out now, thank goodness. Just a few at the former stoma site left)?

We'll see. You're more likely to get flowers and spiders here, I think, but we'll see.

Before I leave you with the flowers part, I'll just end by saying that when I had my initial surgery (for a diverticulitis-related rupture, not colorectal cancer), I was dealing with things well enough that my ET nurse suggested that once I was out of the hospital I should consider volunteering with new stoma patients to offer support and let them know how things work. I thought she was slightly out of her tree at the time because I hadn't yet found out how I was going to deal with things. Well, I lived with it for a year and four-and-a-bit months, and now? I\m honestly thinking about the volunteer idea. I had some bad days, yes, but far more good days. And really, even the bad days could be of some value, right?

I'll keep you posted. Now, though, flowers:

Forsythia

More Forsythia

Grape Hyacinth almost ready to open

Early Blue Violet, one of our earliest wildflowers. One of my favourites, too.

Around the yard

Had to go to emergency today (don't panic -- it's a small town, and they use their emergency department kind of like a walk-in clinic on weekends) because the home care nurse was concerned that my incision is reddening. It's probably just irritation from the staples, though. They ended up taking out half of the staples and started me on a precautionary antibiotic in case it's the start of an infection. No big deal.

Why did I even mention it?

Well, the next time you complain about Canada's health care system -- and I'm not saying that it's perfect by any means, because it isn't -- just remember this:

• I have a home care nurse to check on my healing and change my dressing.
• I had the option of going to a no-fee emergency clinic instead of having to wait until regular office hours tomorrow.
• I've been looked after long before the chance of an actual emergency.

We take too much of this stuff for granted, folks. You know that we do.

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No more blather from me today, so since I do have a bunch of photos taken with an actual camera instead of a potato (as one of my coworkers calls cameraphones), let's take a look at what's budding in Dad's yard:

Red-osier Dogwood leaf buds

Lilac

Prairie Crocus (pasqueflower) flower bud

Rose

Saskatoon leaves

More Saskatoon

Soon to be a tulip, if the deer don't eat it first

Believe it or not I have even more new pictures, but you're not getting them all at once since I'll still be around a computer for a few more days at least.

You'll get so tired of actually hearing from me...

Pointless cat photo of the day:

Bob's weird about laser pointers. He isn't fooled: he knows what makes the dot, knows what drawer the pointer is in (and you'd better be planning to play red dot for at least a bit if you go into the drawer for something else, because he'll come running), and knows that he'll never catch the dot.

He doesn't care. It's still his favourite toy.

This was from this morning. I've been sleeping in the recliner because it's still a little tough to sleep flat, and I've been (foolishly, I guess) putting my glasses in the same drawer as the laser pointer. I get my glasses out in the morning; the cat comes running because he's decided that it's red dot time.

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Wound update time now, I suppose. The main incision has healed up to the point that the staples are starting to irritate the skin, and I'm hoping that they don't wait until the surgeon's date of Tuesday before they remove them and go steri-strip instead. As for the stoma site, which was left partly open so that the remaining cavity could drain as it closed up, it's draining so much less that I have hopes of IT being steri-stripped too, soon. It'd be nice to not have to worry about dressings. Thank goodness for Home Care, though. It means that I don't have to make my way to a clinic or office every morning for the daily packing change.





That's it for now, I suppose. I'm hoping to get out with the camera (real camera, not phone) this afternoon for a while, so you may not be getting a daily cat-in-living-room photo EVERY time.

Maybe.

I seriously never get to use my afghan

Nothing much new on the health front to add today; moving is a little easier, the draining former stoma site is a little less drainy, etc., etc.

I'm eating easier today, though. For the first few days after the better part of a week on a fluid diet your stomach takes approximately a bite and a half or food before it feels full. Good for weight loss, I suppose, but not so good for nutrition. Things are coming along now, so I can't complain much..

Just for fun, let's end with a shot of the same afghan that I took while I was recovering from the first operation in late November of 2014. Would you say that the boys grew a little?



Yep.

A little spring colour

Early Blue Violets are always some of our earliest (thus the name) wildflowers in Alberta. I always look forward to them.

Let's see, what else...



Oh yeah. I had surgery. I got through surgery. I got sent home (well, to Dad's for a bit) yesterday.

Things are ok. I'm sore and tired and very good at napping, and as of late this morning I have a real answer when the medical professionals ask me if I've had a bowel movement. Erm, your bowels stop working for a while after surgery. And if you try to make them work too soon by, say, eating too heavily, you get to find out what reverse peristalsis is.

I'll let you look that one up for yourselves.

The thing's working now, though. Welcome back to the system, rectum. Repeatedly. TMI? TDB, I figure.

Anyway, I've been sitting here for a while now, so it's probably time to go back upstairs and laze in the recliner for a while. Just wanted my two fans who may not have been keeping track of my daily meals on twitter to know that things went fine, and now it all comes down to healing.



Again.

Pointless photo of the however long:

 Thought I'd go for extremely pointless, considering.

So... countdown to me being in the hospital, for those who may have forgotten. Today, diet restrictions. Tomorrow, purging and liquids. Thursday? Scalpel...

Yeah, that's right. I'm doing self-surgery.

Anyway, this is where I'd normally say that I'm disappearing for a while, but with today's technology that all depends on how good the wifi is. Oh, and how I'm feeling, of course. I may show up out of boredom, in other words.

Today, though, I'm just going to leave you with the random wtf to the left, and the squirrel making use of my dad's squirrel feeder below. And why the squirrel?

It just seemed like a squirrel kind of day, that's all.

Later, folks.

Pointless cat photo of the day:

Bob in full Bob pose. Told you it was normal.

For Bob.



That's it for today, I'm afraid. It's been a fairly exhausting week, what with many (MANY) summer staff interviews, getting my final surgical appointments in order, and... Brussels (edited to add Baghdad, sadly), which really shouldn't be the last thing on this list. Still, I guess it's human nature that self will out, even as humanity proves once again that it too often lacks its namesake.

More blathery-type typing in the next day or so, maybe, depending on what my mood does. In the meantime, just enjoy the Bobness.

Happy Spring!

Yes, boys and girls, it's springtime in Alberta. This happened yesterday, of course. Before this it was actually starting to look a bit like spring, but heaven forbid that we'd get REAL spring before June here.

These two very pointless photos (do you like the artsy blinds shot?) were taken with my tablet because my phone was too busy playing music to my bluetooth speaker.

That was a sentence that honestly makes sense these days. My life's gotten weird, at some point, I think.

And what's a camera, again? Poor camera, you really do need to come out for a spin soon.

I need to get back to work, but for those keeping up I should say that I got a new surgery date yesterday and it's a lot sooner than I thought it would be. 'Nuff said there for now, though. We'll worry about the panic when it's closer to panic time.



Later, folks.

Just quickly

I need to take more pointless photos. My stored snow ones are rapidly becoming out of date.

I'm certainly not complaining.



Anyway, this is just a quick post for anyone who was wondering about the surgery thing and isn't local enough to have heard the news. Construction flooding at the hospital has closed half of the operating rooms for an indefinite period. This, of course, means that dozens -- probably more like hundreds if you count the smaller surgeries -- of operations have been postponed.

Mine included.

They're going to continue the pre-op stuff to get it out of the way, and reschedule the last blood test when they know my date.

This could, depending on the wait, be a good thing. Yep, believe it or not.

As it was, the surgical date was cutting it awfully close to the start of spring staff training, and since we have pretty much a new crew this year I'm kinda sorta needed. Now, if I somehow get a date even closer to spring training it'll blow, but if (and considering the uncertainty of everything, this seems more likely) the new date is AFTER training, it'll be ok. Or at least better.

So yeah. Limbo again, but this time with the thing in sight at least.



I'll keep you posted. Have a good weekend.

What the cats were up to this morning

Jus' chillin'. Each in their own ways.

These pictures are also on my instagram account if anyone's into that sort of thing. Find me at deelworld, as usual, because I'm that creative.

The account's pretty new, as in I have a whole four followers. I should add a link badge here, really. In fact, I'll do that after I'm done this.

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A quick word on the operation front: all my pre-op appointments are made, and I have my first blood work and an EKG on Monday. They will tell me that my heart rate's pretty high, because it always is in hospital situations. I get white coat syndrome, as they call it. Many people do. It's screws up measurements, though, and that's a pain in the butt that I could do without. Ah well, it's not like I'm the first or the last person that they'll see whose body's in a panic even while her brain's trying to tell it to stop being so effing stupid.

All of this, of course, is going to make the whole thing more real in a big hurry. I'll spend a lot of time worrying because that's how I'm hooked up. It's making me hope that I don't get bumped, ironically, because I don't see the point in wasting a month's anxiety only to be told that it'll be NEXT month...



I'll keep you posted.

Pointless whatever happens to come out...

The last couple of days I've spent at a teachers convention. It was good -- a lot of new contacts, a lot of updating old ones... and a lot of telling my regulars that I'll be on medical leave.

That makes things real, right?

Yeah, the surgery's approaching. I can't deny it.



I'm not denying it in fact, since I've been letting my teachers know.





It's still weird though. Weird actually wanting someone to cut you open. And for those new to the program, that last statement was literal.

Ah well, it'll happen. And teachers? I'll be back in  the fall. In reality, before then.



I hope.

What do I title yet another jewellery post that may or may not be about jewellery?

First, I should say in regards to the surgery (the end of March for anyone keeping a calendar. For my sister-in-law, my mother's birthday. See if my brother can remember that date...), at the moment I'm fine. When I got the call, the feeling was at last. I've been waiting for so long. Then the feeling became holy crap this is going to happen. That's where that incoherent deleted post came from. Now? I really am fine. I imagine that anxiety will set in in a big way once the date is closer and that I'll start thinking more about what recovery was like the last time, but for now I'm concentrating more on being prepared. Emotionally, physically.... and, let's face it, making sure that my bills are paid and my apartment is clean before the date. Last time was an emergency, for those new to the program, so I had the embarrassment of a mess on top of everything else.

Ok, now on to more frivolous things.

I was on Amazon a while ago because I had the remnants of some gift cards to use up. There was a book that I knew I wanted, but to use up the rest of the amount I was just going to browse. And that, boys and girls, is how Dee habitually ends up overspending with gift cards.

Usually.

This time I instead ended up going to the Deals Store page, which I hadn't ever thought to do before. I know, right? They're going to take away my Cheap and Proud of It card. Anyway, because I'd never been there before I hadn't realised that there was such a thing as Lightning Deals.

Silly, silly girl.

I had a look, and they had me at amber. Well, at silver too, because I'm very much a silver person. Better for my skin tone, and conveniently much better for my wallet. I got the pendant you see here (there's matching earrings as well, but I suck at ear-selfies) for a stupidly reduced price, which lets you know what the original mark-up was. The amber's heat treated (that's how they get the different colours) which isn't my ideal, but the thing seems well put together and, more importantly, looks nice.

Yet more jewellery for my jewellery resurgence, I guess.

I was big on all the stupid but fun eighties jewellery when I was a teenager, but scaled back a lot when I was in university (anyone wearing rings, for example, in a lab with formalin is a bit stupid. Yes, even though you wear gloves). When I started the naturalist thing I wore a bunch of themed earrings because the students liked them. Then that sort of fell by the wayside. And why? Laziness, I suppose.

So why the return?

A rock show. The one where I met the owner of the rock shop that you hear about so frequently. My coworker already knew him, and between the three of us we decided to make a swap of some of our unused specimens for some good pieces of pyrite for our rock programming. And, naturally, I also looked at his jewellery pieces. They were neat so I bought a couple.

I wore them occasionally until one year when we had a week with the same students (we call it nature school) I found out that the kids -- and not just the girls -- were checking to see which rock I was wearing each day. It sparked more learning, and yep, you guessed it. That's when the rock pendants became part of my everyday work wear. They don't get noticed everyday, of course, but they get noticed enough that I've increased my collection.

As you've noticed.





This is the part where I say that it's time for lunch, as my two fans know. It is, and I've typed enough now. I promise no more surgery weirdness until at least mid-March, ok?



There will be more rocks, though. I can guarantee it. Probably tomorrow...

Pointless photo of the day:

 Top: Bob sits on his brother and practices his one-paw kneading technique. Bottom: Bob gives me the whaaat??? look when I take his picture for weirdly sitting on his brother and kneading him with one paw.

Sorry, folks, that's about it. I meant to post some actual blather today, but then I found out that I needed to change my wafer because I was starting to lose a seal so that took priority.

That's ostomy speak for: I needed to redo my medical stuff before I started leaking crap inconveniently.

Not that it's ever convenient to leak crap, but there you go.

I don't talk about the fun of life with a pouch often here, because for the most part it's ok. When it's not ok it's literally shitty, but that's rare.

Anyway, maybe some real blather tomorrow. If not, see you whenever.