The Yellow Brick Road and Tripping Gracefully

I might be clicking my heels together three times if I had a pair of sparkly red shoes. Only, I don’t want to go home, I want to go to the end of my recovery.

Most every IBDer is an adapter since we do not experience perfect health 24/7. We learn how to push ourselves and we do the seemingly impossible, usually on a daily basis, to function as ‘normal’ people when we’re ill. More times that not, we adapt.

And thus, I have. But it’s a whole different ball game when it’s after surgery, or so I have found. Adapting no longer means really participating in your life as much as it means you empty the bag often and watch a lot of Everybody Loves Raymond. And that’s okay, that’s called recovery, not a word I’m used to and not a sideline I’m used to either.

So I am on a yellow brick road - a very long one - but on one nonetheless. It’s twisty and the bricks aren’t all even, but I’m on it. What I am so quickly tripping towards? A full recovery, a day when I can stand for hours, when I can get back to school and be independent. I’ll be there soon, with scraps on my knees, but I will be there.

Nothing and no one is perfect. I recently campaigned for smaller ostomy bags since the ones I had were massive and impossible to dress with. And the new bags are great, much smaller and much better for wearing real-live non-recovery actual clothing. The downside - the smaller the bag the more frequent it needs to be emptied. Which is fine, but it poses a potential issue at night since it fills up quicker. And since I’m already have the habit of sleeping poorly down-pat, checking the bag throughout the night isn’t a problem. But it occurred to me this morning as I was cleaning up the bathroom after spilling the contents of the bag on the bathroom floor by accident, that there’s still some curve balls left in the learning.

But what I do know for sure is that no matter how many curve balls there are, I won’t strike out - because there’s no score-keeping, no limit to falling down, and no one-way to do it right.

So off I go - tripping into the distance - trying to do it as gracefully as I can.

Jennie