Potassium

There are a few things I wish a doctor, and not the ER attendats, had told me about illeostomies.

Apparently, not only losing sodium and electrolytes essential to life like potassium is our problem, but we leach other vital nutrients as well--Even with me, being as slooooooooowwwww digesting as I am with gastroparisis.

(On another note, with careful slow chewing, I can eat nuts. Carefully, mind you, but godddamn it--I can still eat them. In this form especially:

Unrelated to ileostomy, I have spent this year in and out of hospitals with gastroparisis. I barely have the energy to scroll through Tumblr much less type. It's shit. Also not surprisingly, this equals suicidal depression. When one can't see an end to their physical suffering, their torments, their nights of endless no sleep, their years of losing so much weight they can't even walk to the toilet on their own anymore....... yeah.

A delicious bit of advice: picklejuice. I was introduced to this as a young girl living in a town of a different minority where picklejuice was a common cure for muchle aches and pains, and a treat for children. But the sodium lost in exercise, and the sodium lost as an ileostomate--picklejuice becomes the delicious Russian accompanyment to drinking---but not just drink! It should be a little sip every day for yourself--or V8--something to give you back that sodium and other nutrients that the "normals" do not lose.

No one, during my surgury or afterward, informed me of all the shit I'd be losing with my ileiostomy. I have been over and over in the hospital for dangerously low levels of potassium, for dangerously low levels of blood sugar (almost went into a coma thte night of my wedding--that lovely incident with many pictures but I barely remember since I was already slipping into a coma. Woke up in an ambulance. Lovely. Right? Yeah. No. )

Most iliostomates have to worry about their transit being too fast. With mine being too slow... I am often near death. I wish I was being a romantic teenager obsessed with death saying that. But fuck teenagers. I dont wanna die. I have got a lot I want to do. I'm near death because my weight has plummetted this year to the rate that I no longer have muscles attatched to my bones, to that I cannot sleep, my entire body constantly shakes, I no longer have a menses, I vomit constantly and keep only a few ml down every day, I can barely walk much less have sex with my beautiful husband.

Romanitic. Yeah.

Apparently, fucking with your insides surgically can only happen so much before you get gastroparisis. It is an unfortunate side-effect of digging around through someones guts. Bad shit happens. Big suprise. I was afraid of this very thing before my surgery--but "It can't happen to me. No.... only rare people. I'll be fine."

...

And so it goes.

Fair warning.