A myth debunked

Your mother lied to you.

Let me go back a few hours. I was sitting at work today when suddenly I realized I had an amazing opportunity, an opportunity that was not afforded to me before I had surgery. See I have an ileostomy and what that means is a whole bunch of my insides are missing. The long, or I guess short, of it is that I digest food differently from most people and on top of that I can usually see what I ate in my bag when I empty it. When you have about 5 feet worth of digestion less than others it's good to note that things like lettuce, peas, etc don't digest as fully as you may think. Oh I chew stuff very very thoroughly but larger chunks still get through. The other day I had a whole pumpkin seed. Anyway - on to my point.

I was chewing on a piece of gum when my inspiration struck. Remember how your Mom always said if you swallowed gum it stayed in your stomach and didn't digest and eventually would make you sick? She lied. Nothing against your Mom, or my Mom or anyone's Mom but I have just totally debunked that little theory.

Don't get me wrong, I was nervous to try the experiment. There I was chomping away on a lovely piece of strawberry Trident and as much as I wanted to swallow the whole piece I got nervous. Not because I ever believed that it would just stay in my stomach but because I was worried it would try to work itself out, gum up my workings (no pun intended) and be big trouble for me. Even worse, what it it got to the opening and then due to internal gasses Chuck just started blowing pink bubbles?

Never fear - none of that happened. I swallowed my chunk of pink gum and out came my chunk of pink gum. At least little bits and parts of it which proves to me that it does break up on the inside and opens up the question what else do Mom's lie about?

Tonight I attended my first Edmonton Ostomy Association meeting. It was a packed house which I was a little surprised about - however there was no surprise that I brought down the average age in the room by a LOT. And I'm not a spring chicken anymore but I guess to some of them I probably was. They had door prizes of jelly beans and flowered oven mitts. They talked about the annual Christmas party and silent/live auction and how well World Ostomy Day went. And here's the funny part. Amidst all the false teeth, flowered blouses, sensible shoes and the lingering smell of A535 I felt more at ease and comfortable in that room than I have in a long time. I might not have a lot in common with the older set...I have no kids, not retired, don't live in an assisted living facility. But I do have one big, major, life changing thing in common with them and as it turns out it does not discriminate based on age and the one thing I had in common was more important than the million things that were different.

I knew that whatever I was going through they'd been there and done that. My appliance could fall right off in the middle of the meeting and I could have been mopping pink gum poo off the floor of the room at the St. Andrews Church and no one would have batted an eye or hesitated to help me in any way they could. I brought home a stack of reading and information about becoming a visitor for pre and post op patients and already gave out a couple of cards at the meeting and I'm looking forward to connecting with those people very soon.

I have some big things I'm working on - stay tuned for more blog posts and you'll be happy to know that things are going better with my systems and appliances. The whole meeting was totally worth one little sentence from Liz (the same woman who contacted me right after surgery.) She said "I get maximum 2 or 3 days wear out of my appliance and then I have to change it." Angels sang, the light was a little brighter in the room, I breathed deeply and was hugely relieved that I wasn't some kind of ostomy freak and that the amount of wear time I was getting was good. In fact, currently with my 3 to 4 day stretch I'm practically an appliance Olympian.

Chat soon, please remember to pass this blog on to as many people as you think may enjoy reading it or benefit from it. I think it's funny that if you head to the dentist everyone is sure to tell you how so and so almost died from getting a filling and you don't hear the end of it until you've been done with your appointment for months - but head into major surgery like getting a new set of digestive gear and no one breathes a word for months and then you hear things from family members like "my grandmother had one for years" or "I had an aunt who had one for 20 some years and it was wonderful for her health".