Melvin & Me, Part 13: Melvin Bares All!

I have little problem discussing my ostomy openly and adjusting and/or attending to the bag itself as necessary--hell, I get dressed in the locker room at the gym leaving the bag exposed as long as possible to air dry, almost daring people to ask questions while also asserting that I belong in that space and am unashamed to be so.  However, in the same breath, I have held a few things back, some for my own comfort and some for the perceived comfort of others.  This is a disservice to us both, I feel.  So, today, I want to show you Melvin.  Anyone who does not want to see pictures of intestines poking out of a surgically-placed permanent hole in my abdomen should turn back now.  

It's a risk to post this.  It's a risk to show what this really looks like and what it really is.  Someone might be grossed out and unfollow.  Someone might never be able to look at me the same way again.  But mostly, I feel exposed in a very different way, which is the scariest component to me.  The bag itself serves as both protection for my clothes and containment, but it also keeps some of the reality of my situation slightly obscured, too, meaning that it can feel just like a weird, oversized bandaid, an abstract rather than a concrete fixture of my body.  

But this is real.  That's hard to digest some times.  I expect people to be okay looking at plastic and bandages, but even I sometimes struggle with looking at the stoma itself, when I consider it outside of the clinical understanding or am checking the skin around it.  I know all too well the full weight of what it actually means.  Removing the adhesive and plastic that holds me together and exposing the full truth, it makes me profoundly uncomfortable in ways that even re-reading and editing this a few times over I still feel I cannot adequately describe it.  

But here it is.  This is me.  And this is the ostomy that helps me live a fuller, healthier life.  

Melvin is about the size of a half-dollar.  The deep pink part there, that is a piece of my intestines folded back over itself and sewn to my skin.  It moves with the natural peristalsis of my body, the process by which food is moved through the digestive tract.  Sometimes, that piece of intestines sticks out almost an inch from the surface of my skin; sometimes it is an eighth of an inch or so under the surface, a concave, breathing swell of living tissue.  I can touch my intestines, force my finger into the hole to swipe away bits of carrot that are stuck around that entrance.  I can feel pressure, but it doesn't hurt--those kinds of nerves aren't there because they're not anatomically needed there.  It's okay to leave this area exposed--in fact, I like to let the skin breathe for as long as possible--but Melvin has a propensity for "erupting" before I fully realize what's happening meaning that I try not to push my luck longer than necessary.  

This is my body.  Melvin is a part of my body.  I am not ashamed of my ostomy.
  

And here we are all dressed up again, ready to go about life once more.  That could be swimming a mile or Zumba at the gym, trying to figure out how to ride a bicycle, going to work, hanging out with friends, or most every life activity.  

I am glad to have Melvin in my life.  My ostomy helps me live the best life possible.  That doesn't mean that it's not hard to stomach (so to say) some days.  But there it all is, raw, real, and very much a part of who I am.