First off, thanks to those of you that sent me a message that you're reading this... for some reason that helps. I appreciate your interest in my struggles. There are plenty of things I think about writing here and just don't feel like sitting here to write them. Or by the time I am sitting here, I just don't feel like thinking about them anymore.

I finally had a follow-up appointment with my ET nurse on Monday and that went really well. She really is a nice lady and very effective at putting your mind at ease dealing with a difficult subject. She was late but their office actually called me and asked me to push the appointment back 30 minutes, which was cool. One of my other doctors, I have sat in his waiting room for 90 minutes because he's so backed up. In fact, I think every time I've seen him, at least recently, the wait has been an hour minimum. That's just not cool.

Anyway, back the the ET nurse appointment. My stoma has been shrinking, which is normal, but that means the bag openings were too big now. When that happens, the skin around the stoma gets raw and irritated because of the acids in your intestines. Now that I've seen the nurse though, she resized it for me and that won't happen again. She had told me to not change the bag (or "appliance" as they're called) before seeing her, so I hadn't changed it in 7 days which is at least 2 days too long. That contributed to the raw area. She gave me some powder to put on the raw area and that should heal up in a week or so. The best part though is that now that the stoma is shrinking down to its normal size (they are swollen after surgery and need a few weeks to shink down), she switched me from the generic large opening "cut to fit" appliances to a smaller opening "cut to fit" appliances that has a cupped area right around the stoma. Hard to explain without actually showing you, but the point here is that the new bag is MUCH more comfortable. With the old ones, I felt like I had a plate stuck to my stomach and it felt like it was buckling unless I sat up perfectly straight. These new ones don't feel like that at all. It feels more like a bandage on my stomach and when I'm sitting still the feeling almost goes away. Plus, the cupped area makes it possible to wear under jeans (I've been wearing sweats since the surgery). This is all hopefully temporary on me since they'll be reversing my ostomy in a month or so, but I was having a bit of a hard time learning to feel "normal" with the old appliance. I realize it hasn't even been a month yet, but still. If anything goes wrong, either now or in the future, I may be stuck with this thing, so my doctor wants me to take this time to learn to live with it. This new one definitely makes that much more possible.

In other news, I've been walking a lot lately. My doctor had said the 2 key areas after surgery were walking a lot and watching what I ate. The eating part is because it's not too difficult to get a blockage if I eat the wrong thing right now or eat too fast and don't chew tougher food adequately. The funny thing is I'm actually supposed to stay away from raw vegetables and things like potato skins and corn... things your body doesn't break down really well. The walking part though is really significant. So significant in fact that I wish I would have really pushed it earlier. When I was in the hospital, I was trying to walk a fair amount. Once I got home though, I settled into my recliner and just walked around the house when necessary. I had planned on walking outside and to the park nearby, but the weather just sucked, so I didn't. The pain was sticking with me... it wasn't really severe, but it hurt enough to take a vicodin. It was sort of a cross between feeling like my insides were sticking together and the wounds/scars were tightening up and contracting. A few days ago, I decided that if I was going to take a vicodin to make the pain go away, I was also going to walk and use the pain-free time to good use. So I started doing laps around my pool, just a nice casual pace walking the perimeter. The first day I did 20 laps and afterward... hey, the pain actually feels a bit less. The next day I was determined to continue walking, so I made some really rough calculations and figured that a half mile was probably about 33 laps. Easy enough, so I'm doing 33 laps 3 times a day and it's made a huge difference. I'm off the vicodin completely now and most of the time have no need of it whatsoever. Once in a while it aches a little or I feel a bit run down, but most of the time I'm definitely feeling better. I've decided to up the lap count each outing now because 33 isn't really a challenge. It's more of a time sink, so I don't know how high I'll go with it... I just want to push it up a ways gradually and give me some concrete numbers to shoot for.

Anyway, that's about all for now, I've been sitting here long enough. Oh, I do want to write up something about the second book I read, but I'll come back later and do that.

-jk