Divorced and Single

 So the time has come. for years it was draining from a pond into a swamp, one that i was drowning in.
I finally got a divorce, thanks to pro bono working attorneys. This also means i have no idea if it is finished or not,  but we think it is. :/

I wasn't protected by the person that was supposed to love me. I was hurt physically and notionally, and once was taken advantage of sexually when i wasn't in a state to accept it.he gossiped to his parents about me, he didn't want to hug me, my mom paid for his grad school and he never so much as wrote her a thank you note. He took money from both me and my mom and bought expensive stupid supplies with it. I wasn't important enough for him to stand up for me, especially since his parents had hated me all along, it was easier for him to fall back into the habit of being under their wings at the age of 30. 
The last two years of our time together, I was self medicating and drinking far too much to dull the deep bleeding ache I felt.
It's just like that Sia song, Elastic Heart. There were so many red flags, and i discarded them. It's hard to lose a chosen one, the one you thought you would spend your life with.

On top of all that, the pain of him pulling away, refusing to hug me, then refusing to kiss me--  it came to a point that we had gone so long without sleeping in the same bed or even in the same room that it was normal.

Seeing each other again was like seeing a ghost of the love we once had, and how ruined it was now, just a husk, just a mutilated thing that now was so wrapped up with hatred and hurt and betrayal that our meeting last fall as he took the remainder of his things away to his parent's house was a cold one indeed.

Why do you hate me? I did nothing so horrible to you, I used to think, before I convinced himself we were both holding the dagger stabbed into the other's back.

              

 

The thing is, you never think it's going to be your last.

The last time you had sex. The last time you held and kissed them. The last time you felt their body pressing against yours and the nearness of them dizzied you with love. The last time you'd told each other you loved them. You didn't think at that time, warm seasons ago, when you lay in the lake together, balancing your hands on each other shoulders while kissing his wet hair that this would be it. And never again.

Running out at night under the stars in the fields, collapsing together, out of breath, watching the sky as the moon climbed high in the sky.

On top of the roof of an old shack, bright lights falling from the sky in a shower of comets. The feeling of elation in your heart, and that comforting notion that never again would you have to search for a mate—because you found it in them.

I've always been a person highly aware of the present and the now not being forever. More often the good than not. I've always been over sensitive to that whatever niceness was going on, it would all be brutally cut short one day.

But still, somewhere around where my heart lies is s a fleeting moment of love, like a spark that quickly lit and then went out. Was it even love anymore? It must be, because though this was our new normal, I still remember what it tasted like to kiss his entire body. I remembered the rain that came down on the first night we made love, and how afterwards, both I and Him had gone out in it, me with my arms wide as I twirled, eyes closed and that lingering smile on my face. I remember the joy. I remembered how we both had protected each other emotionally, physically...

Once you loved me so much...

How to Excuse yourself Politely when your Ileo's burpin up shit

Apparently, I have had a lot of Drafts here I've never posted. So... I suppose that is why I haven't updated in a while. I'm so SMRT that I didn't realize they were going into drafts.
Dar dar dar, I know wrds and hw to type on compooters. :/

Anywoozles,
With trousers, it's often quite easy to mask or hide a bag. An ileostomy bag ain't that big--depending on the brand you're going with. But against your right leg, you are totally aware of that thing and like "Omg--they are totally looking at it right now, freaking out, wondering if it's gonna burst liquid shit on them."

TRUST. Ain't no one care about your bag. They forgot about it the moment you told them. It's interesting, but not THAT interesting.
Unless it fills up with air (like mine does in the morning) or shit, it isn't noticeable at all.
It if starts to get uncomfortable or you think it might be noticeable, you could direct the attention to something else "Ah! I think I have something my eye! Excuse me!" (then run to the Water Closet) or "Pardon--I'm embarrassed to say I have something stuck in my teeth". These are good excuses, and then you can make an elegant exit without making it about "My ileostomy is shitin out lotsa stuff and it's goan go all ova da place if I don get to a terlet".

The worst is in a restaurant.

For years, I avoided eating with people or going out to the point that my in-laws wondered if I had an eating disorder. It wasn't surprising. I mean... I weigh like 3 lbs and look like a hairless baby chick or like Gollum with eyeliner.  But every time I eat, or am just moving around, or am just sitting there... my bag fills up. And my stoma is like a bratty child. I swear to Jeebus it has an incarnation of some spoiled little shit kid who is always plotting and planning, biding its time, being silent when I'm alone, and then as soon as I'm with people:

 

Thanks MacBook Pro Paintbrush. You are a piece of shit and NOTHING as easy to use as Windows Paint >:(

I have found for me this is inevitable. As I have no shame, decorum, delicate elegance and usually make the Britishly self-deprecating jokes regarding myself,  I have found it is much easier to just say at a polite pause in the meal--or at the end of it-- "I have to wash my hands and dump my bag. I'll be right back."

I mean--you got an ileostomy. It's just a part of your life. It's better if someone's head explodes from this announcement than your bag.
Man--I've had that trouble a lot. The exploding bag, I mean.

Many times when I am sleeping, the darn stupid NOT STICKY AT ALL wafer bends and leaks shit all over my blankets, my clothing, and my soul. Yes, my SOUL.
There's no way to act all cute in the morning with your loved one, waking up to Vivadli's Four Season's as you adorably prance out of your room clutching bedsheets covered in brown feces.
:D

It's dehumanizing to sleep on towels or a bed covered in plastic like you are an incontinent 4-year old. 
Just... just no.


I have a very valid concern that my wafer will crack in public, and I will be left with no way to change it, fix it, or escape. It just isn't practical to carry alllll of your ostomy supplies with you wherever you go. A tote-bag is too large to haul around constantly! 
But, even though I have the supposedly "useful" sticky liquid, I have found masking tape around the edges of the wafer do assist in keeping the leaking feces at bay if you are wearing your bag for more than a day or 2.
(For monetary reasons of making them last, I do this quite frequently. I do not recommend it. :/ )

Then again, this is just a personal experience. Most ileostomates I have connected with were able to resume their normal diet after surgery, avoiding the usual suspects of mushrooms and globs of things that would cause a blockage... and their transit time was normal-to-fast, unlike my slow slow slow 8-hour speed. :''(

I am an unusual example.
 Doctors being mystified over my many health problems has long since lost the quirky sort of curiosity one experiences from continuous confused frowns, muttering with other doctors whilst you are still in the room, and the inevitable non-diagnosis of" idiopathic"--which basically means they don't know why and there is no reason for it.

As a last comfort to those newly branded with a rosebud stoma (heh. I named my small intestine stub 'Rosebud'. Orson Welles 1941 Citizen Kane, yall), I have a 40-something Degree and 75 degree curvature of my spine--both upper back and lower. Somehow my body looks normal...normal-ish... but my X-rays make me look like a cool awesome monster being that Marvel Comics should totally make into an evil villain.
For long years, it has been speculated by many that the pinched nerves and messed-up things in my dinosaur spine were causing me problems with my intestines, my nerve-endings in my face and legs, and other problems all across my withered little form.
So lucky you, dude! You probably wont have the horror-story experience I do, but perhaps maybe you can gather a bit of information and hints from these rambles.

At least... I hope it's a bit informative and entertaining.

<3

Un-Related to Ileostomies, but a broken-face part of life

Unrelated...

When I was 17 I entered a relationship with a boy that I thought I would marry. Yeah yeah.. young love and all that happy crappy.
It was mostly an entirely unsexual bonding, and the guy was more like a really best friend. Our conversations rocked, but whenever i wasn't physically in front of him, he forgot me. Forgot my birthday numerous times, forgot ot call me, or I'd wait all day for a time we were supposed ot have together, but.. he forot and was playign World of Warcraft with his buddies. :/
Nice.
Anyway, not bitching, I'm over it, but one of my birthdays, the last I spent with him, we got into a fight, and well, my ratty hair got grabbed by the back of my skull, and my lover face and jaw were delightfully smashed against a cement windowsill. I blacked out there on the kitchen floor, and when I woke, there was blood everywhere and I was crying out "where's my tooth?" 

With my mother's angry urging, he paid the not-insurance-covered coin to replace my tooth with a ceramic cap.
but about 6 years later, when my husband & I returned to MN, it broke off as we were riding in the car to get groceries.
YAY!

So that's without the crown. My little stub. Aint it just cute?
Now that we're on foodstamps (yay :( ) and dont make no money without no jobs, we were able to cover some of the enormous cost with some deal my husband did because it involved numbers and research and that's HIS bag--I do the stuff that doesn't require math. That's our deal, that's our teamwork. 

So after many times of a temporary cap thing falling off while I'm drinking my morning coffee or sipping Butternut Squash soup, I finally got my 'permanent' crown on once again.
In direct sunlight, it's a bit off-coloured compared to my other teeth, but it'll do, right?

Nice patch of sunlight there right on that fucker.

Unforch for my time as a young 20's -something, that birthday present from my X-boyfriend (Happy birthday! I forgot it was your birthday again--but here's a broken face!) also included a broken jaw.

So there's a bulge on my jaw there where the bone healed all weird... and damn, one day when I have money I'm gonna get it shaved smooth or something.

Yay for depressing update!

Gonna work on some more blog posts related to ileostomies now. Sorry for all that!

<3

My top lip was also busted open, and I have a faint scar there I can cover with some old theatre makeup that's awesomely cake-y, but I can't whistle anymore. That fucking sucks. I used to whistle like, crazy good and that pisses me off more than the broken jaw.

Vitamins & Minerals Lost with an Ileostomy Proves Deadly

So it would have been nice if an ostomy nurse or, you know, a fucking Doctor had informed me that once you have an ileostomy, the part of the intestine that actually absorbs minerals and vitamins like B12 and B1 (Thiamine Skip to the part that says "WHAT IS THIAMINE AND WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES OF THIAMINE DEFICIENCY?") and all the other B vitamins is gone. Yeah. Gone. No big deal, right?
Without B1, you begin to get lesions on your brain.
Lesions. Deep sinking holes and sores that eat away at brain tissue. I was actually actively dying. Fun.

B1 is fortified in almost all of our foods, from bread to milk to cereal and whatever. That's why clinics and hospitals have stopped testing for B1 deficiency, as they assume most Western culture peoples consume of it in their every day lives. And that's true, they do. But for ileostomates, we don't absorb many B vitamins anymore. Some ileostomates have a pretty good diet, more normal to what they had before. Those of us that have had severe diet changes, well, at the two year mark, our B1 deficiency begins to show.

This year, I began to get disoriented, confused, angry at weird shit, and my hands and whole body were constantly shaking like I had Parkinson's disease--I felt like I was going mad, and even tried anitidepressants, which only made matters worse. Why did I change so suddenly? What the fuck was happening to me? I couldn't get out of bed, my entire body ached and hurt, I lost so much weight I now am just a skelaton.

My husband works at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in our province, and researched through their database to discover that after two years, quite a few ileostomates with drastically changed diets begin to develop B1 deficiency. Some have it worse than others. Some can manage it. Some aren't affected. But those that are end up, well, dying.

In Canada, it is legal to order B1 solution online, and we just walked into a pharmacy and asked for insulin needles and received them. When Thiamine enters your muscle tissue, it is the most painful burning like fucking liquid Napalm I have ever experienced in my life. I have had 8 or 9 surgeries in my life, and I have to say I would take another surgery over having injections of Thiamine. But I have them every few days anyway, because without it, I begin to slip back into a really disoriented and fucked-up state of being. That's no way to live, man. What the hell.

For those in the US, if you are very clever and don't mind spending a few dollars to save your life, you can find sources through the internet in which to receive injectable B1/Thiamine ordered from Canada. Not that I encourage anyone to do 'illegal' shit, but come on. Uhm...... Thiamine shouldn't be illegal to get. What the fuck--like you're gonna get high on Thiamine? Impossible. Like you're gonna collect a whole bunch and go to a middle-school in a trenchcoat and be like, "Hey kids. You wanna get Thiamine injections? Come on. All the cool kids are doing it."
You can never have too much B1 in your system, and you can never have too much B12. Your body just kinda deposes of it, like if you have "too much" vitamin C. It leaves through your urine and stuff like that.

Dude, this shit sucks.

No More Intestines= No More Seratonin!

As far back as I can remember, I have never laid all day in bed. Even after surgeries, the anesthetists are always like "holy shit" when I sit up in bed and start talking, grab my IV pole and walk on outta there to start making the rounds. Even when I've had the flu, I've generally lugged myself about enough to make it to the water closet, to the kitchen, to the couch, and back to bed.

I've never been one of those people that's been bored, either. I never used to wake up with nothing to do: I always wanted to write that day, no matter what day it was, even birthdays. I never woke without a purpose.

This year has been a pile of feces slowly dissolving into a pile of corpse exudate. Just when I think it cant get any worse; oh it does, and then some, and then some more. And the rock bottom always sinks ever lower and lower.

Some of this is due to moving four times within the year and losing some of my most important and much beloved items. Some of it has to do with Gastroparisis, and losing so much potassium I blacked out for an entire day, apparently screaming lying on the kitchen floor while hazing seizure after seizure.

But even being borderline depressed my entire life,  I have never before experienced such a lack of energy and apathy that I cannot even move out of bed, don't even look at the Internet, read, or write. I just lie there. Just. Lie. There. Like a dead thing--and likely smelling and looking like one too.

This is related to iliostomies how?
Serotonin.

Where is fancy bred; in the heart or in the head? Serotonin is created in the gut and in the head, and if you are missing a large portion of your intestines, such as for an ileostomy, you are not already making enough serotonin to 'block' in the synapse. As the US Library of Medicine & National Institutes of Heath says: "the predominant site of serotonin synthesis, storage, and release is the enterochromaffin cells of the intestinal mucosa. Within the intestinal mucosa, serotonin released from EC cells activates neural reflexes associated with intestinal secretion, motility, and sensation."

As my apathy and depression, insomnia, and suicidal panic grew worse, no one thought to tell me that without my large intestine creating seratonin, this shit happens. I was put on an SSRI, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, Mirtazapine, a med to help both peeps with Gastroparisis and to help with my moods. It made me worse than before, and every day I felt like I had a hangover and couldn't even look at the sun or roll out of bed. My husband was carrying me to the water closet at this point, and again, the lackluster care of a shrugging physchologist left me floundering. With much research both on my husband and mothers side (both of them in the medical field, anyway), we discovered  5HTP.

5HTP has been used for 40 plus years in Europe and is safe as a fucking fluffy bunny that gives you no alergies, wont bite, and just wants to cuddle with gentle fluffy rainbow kisses. Actually, it's much safer than SSRIs, which can lead to 'seratonin syndrome' (a nasty bit of business, there) and for which everyone and their Dr admits takes mutiple trial and errors for years before the 'right' combination of drugs are found. It will not fuck your system up and make you fat, you wont feel tired from it, you wont have any type of reaction or side-effect.
 Don't take it if you're already on a antidepressant, because you gotta wean off that shit completely before you start another thing, dig?

 I love how on WebMd, some little asshole writing for big Pharma bashes it and makes baseless, false claims of how it's unsafe, just because Big Fucking Pharma can't regulate and sell it. Haha, assholes!

Now, I haven't been taking it long enough to know if it will help me, but it will, though it takes months to really get it in the ol' bloodstream.

In any case, this is just soemthing else to watch out for if you're an ileostomate. If you start feeling increasingly lethargic, depressed, have no appetite, can't concentrate, and generally feel like a pile of shit, this was be your problem.

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.

Nutrition & Healing

As I've been struggling to remain alive, every day it becomes more apparent how important nutrition is to our health. Fucking shut up, right? Duh. But I mean, REALLY think about it. Really be mindful about what you are putting into your body.
My life has progressed from bad to worse, with neuropathic icicle-stabbing pain into the giant spreading numbness on my left thigh, the constant tremors in my hands and body, constant vomiting and muscle wasting of delightful Gastro Parisis. The actual things I can "eat" as in chew are only a few cherries, a couple of frozen blueberries, maybe a cracker or two and a bite of soft cheese. Everything else is vitamins, supplements, pills and Ensure.
Needless to say, I could be doing better. Sorry to get all earthy on you like this, but I've found Chakra meditations really assist. THIS is a kick-ass website that has nothing to do with religion whatsoever, just offering guided meditation as a way for us to harness what's already there inside. I've been practicing meditation for a while now, and on days when I've really focused quite well and been able to calmly meditate, I can harness my body's energy enough to not vomit! Sounds disgusting and like "oh wow, good job, loser" but for someone that's been barfing a few times a day for the past 7 or whatever months, this is a huge accomplishment. I was so excited I had to burst out and tell my husband and he was like "YEAH--YOU ROCK!"
Now, meditation has been known for thousands of years to promote healing. But there is numerous research now to justify making it a part of your daily life, as important as feeding yourself nutritious and delicious foods. As important as taking Bromelain to help reduce swelling after surgery, so is it important to assist your body to heal through meditation. Meditation is not unique to only one culture or religion. You don't have to renounce your deities to meditate. Meditation has been around in both Christian and Jewish practices for a very long time, but had trickled out of popularity during the 1500s.

So that's my bit on healing, and because i have such shit nutrition but don't want ot die, here's what I most sincerely recommend to anyone of any health stage:

This shit may look like nasty green powder, but I get the Acai & Mango-flavoured shit, mix with with a bit of oj and it's fucking delicious and super damn good for you. Okay--so I just spilt it all over my bed--green sweet powder everywhere. Ugh.

I wish I had this in capsules, because swallowing it is nearly impossible like gagging down whole fish--but of course unrefined omega fatty acids are beyond awesome for your body. From the website "for people who want one product that gives them all of the good fats they need, without any of the bad fats they should avoid. Every cell, tissue, gland and organ is dependent upon the presence of essential fatty acids. They are the main structural component of cell membranes and are necessary for cell growth and division."

(Wouldn't that be mitosis, then? I remember learning that in 4th grade, mitotis is the process of cell division, although the definition is swaying and changing throughout the years.) 

This lastly is some seriously delicious shit. It actually DOES taste like lemon meringue, and all you need is a swallow every day to get your Omega 3s. Damn good stuff.

Much more, but I have some research to do <3