New Year, New Me

The Stoma Diaries Pt4

You know how people say stuff on New Year's Eve like 'New Year, New Me!' and they really mean it at the time but a week later they're rolling around on the settee in their underwear, mainlining crisps and bingeing on shit telly while all the exercise gear they bought in the sales gathers dust under the bed?

Well I normally avoid making outlandish statements like that but this year I said it...and not only did I mean it, it's actually going to happen. 

I was at a very stylish black tie wedding in Chipping Norton on NYE (if you don't know where that is it's in Oxfordshire and the likes of the Beckhams, Clarkson and Cameron live around there - they weren't invited though 'cos they're not cool enough...) and I wasn't comfortable in myself or the clothes I was wearing. Obviously I looked great (I'm basically Newcastle's number one top model after all 😉) but my stoma and the hernia I gave myself right underneath it are very difficult to disguise at the best of times but nigh on impossible under a fitted white shirt so I felt like a freak most of the day. This impacted on my ability to command the dance floor as I normally would so I had to let 'the yoof' have their day while I sat on the sidelines drinking and considered the last nineteen months of shitting into a bag.

There'd been challenging points and times my head had went down but I'd also had a brilliant year with football, gigs and great times with friends and family. I thought of the good people who'd sadly not made it this far and had a quiet drink for them and then I gave myself a metaphorical slap around the chops and told myself to get a grip. I'm not one to wallow in self-pity anyway but at the aforementioned wedding there was a person who'd had chemotherapy that very day and had every reason to not the leave the settee but they'd made a massive effort to get there to be with their family. As someone who's been through the same experience I know just how difficult that must have been and it gave me the required boot up the arse to cheer the fuck up.

Anyway, the reason I'm so confident of the 'New Me' bit? Well my stoma reversal operation is scheduled for 18th Jan (it was initially going to happen on 4th Jan but got postponed) and I'm very confident that it'll actually happen thanks to my mighty stoma nurse Lisette.

I hadn't seen her for nearly a year before making an appointment in the summer 'cos I was having issues with bags peeling off (that's not good by the way!) and as soon as I walked in she pointed out I'd given myself a rather large hernia at the stoma site (trying to stay fit and kicked the arse out of it like a dickhead!) and sorted me out some more suitable bags. Job done. More importantly though, I was back on her radar and she wasn't happy with the length of time I'd waited for a reversal. Sure enough I got a phone call at the end of August telling me I was going in a week later (thanks Lisette) then got a phone call three days later telling me it'd been cancelled but it didn't matter, I knew I was near the top of the list now...well, that and it meant I could go to Amsterdam with the lads instead. 😎

I then got another call at the end of November telling me I was booked in for 4th Jan at Scarborough Hospital, I was excited about that for another three days before I got another call postponing it until 18th Jan...and here we are. No more calls, no more postponements (yet) and normalish life beckoning to me in siren fashion.

'Ish' is the operative bit of normal like, it struck me over Christmas that I'll never go back to how I was mentally or physically and I know there's more than a few ups and downs in my very near future. The main one is that I'm going to have to re-train my bowel after the operation - having not been used for over nineteen months - and that means the shit is, quite literally, ganna hit the fan...and everything else. It's a bit embarrassing even typing it but I've never really lacked confidence (if you know me you might have noticed that over the years! 😁) and , while it's in the back of my mind that I nearly died the last time I had surgery, my whole life is about positivity and I can just see a long hot summer of picnics on the beach, drinks in beer gardens, music, sport and good times.  

Whatever happens I'll get through it 'cos this has been going on since August '21 when I had a 50/50 chance of staying alive and here I am, still in the game.

New Year, New Me...let's fucking have it!

© Andy Rivers 2024