OstomyMan

This last weekend I headed out with some friends to go rafting. For more details about the trip itself, you can read about them on my personal blog here. I actually had a really good time despite the fact that I had my first real problem with a bag that I was unprepared to handle. [...]

For the last several months before I had my surgery, my feet swelled up. It was minor at first and we tried various things to solve it, but I was doing so poorly that even working from bed with my feet elevated the whole day didn’t solve it.
TPN helped and my feet went down in [...]

A while back my wife and I were joking about intestinal transplants. She has goats that she milks and a couple of them were butchered, so she was offering me goat intestines as a replacement for my missing colon. It was actually quite funny and I’ve had it on my list of things to blog [...]

We’re coming up on 6 months here in a few days. I had my ileostomy surgery on February 27th, so in 3 more days it will officially be my semi-anniversary as an ostomate. I figured I’d take a look back over the last while and see if I could document some of the things that [...]

It’s a funny side effect, but I think now that I am feeling better, my eye sight is returning to normal. I used to have really good vision. My mom used to call me “Eagle Eye” because I could see things very far away. But as my health deteriorated, so did my eye sight. Last [...]

Today my wife had to dash out of town for the evening so I got to fulfill the promise to go swimming with our daughter. And since I have my new ostomy swim trunks I was up for the challenge. So we went swimming for a few minutes until my daughter wanted to get out [...]

It’s been a long time since I’ve really been swimming. I used to love to swim, but as things got worse healthwise, I was less and less inclined to go. But my one year old daughter really enjoys going to the pool and now that I am feeling better, I like to go also.
I haven’t [...]

Having insurance is definitely a pain. And I hate having to write the check every month (or every quarter) to the insurance company. But it’s one of those expenses that gets paid no matter what. It’s really nice to have when you need it. I’m very happy that I have had health insurance, even though [...]

Since I have already maxed out my insurance deductible and out-of-pocket expense limit with my first hospital stay in January and then my surgery in February, my insurance is now paying for everything else that happens this year. And that includes my ostomy supplies. So I have decided to stock up. I still haven’t fully [...]

The other day I went to play laser tag for my little brother’s birthday party. It was the three adults versus about six little kids. I actually had a very good time playing, but the next day I was quite sore. My thighs haven’t done much work in the last few years with being sick [...]