Bag Lady

*Warning detailed poop talk contained in this post, click away now if you do NOT want to read.*

When I was in 7th grade I had these two annoying boys that sat in front of me in math class that would always taunt me (of course at this age I didn't realize that's what boys do to girls they like.) I was just annoyed and embarrassed. I didn't carry a backpack, I carried this cute little over the shoulder E.sprit bag -- I loved E.sprit and going to the big outlet with my mom for school clothes.

Anyway, these pimply little boys used to always call me the Bag Lady. I hated it, I mean loathed it and wanted to cry sometimes because of it, clearly the rise they got out of me was what kept them going.

Little did I know Bag Lady would take on so many different meanings later in life. First there was my temp ileostomy, Stubby, and his bag. Then when I got KP, I had the temp drainage to the leg bag for the first 3 weeks. I'm a true bag lady and this weekend I had to hook good old leg bag again.

You see, I was getting slightly better each day last week, not great but definitely better than Tuesday. I had to switch one of my antibiotics on Thursday because I was having some yucky side effects. Unfortunately however, I believe one or the combination of both antibiotics has thickened up my stool so much that I could barely get any out of my tube, it was dark and super thick and pasty -- Not good when everything has to come out a tube an inch wide. My emptying has been hard and painful and not very productive and because of this my stomach has slowly been getting more distended and hard. Add this to the pain of the infection and by Saturday all that I'd gained in the recovery process went out the window.

I started getting really scared by Saturday evening when I was in constant pain, had no appetite and was just overall not feeling well. So I went back to my roots as the Bag Lady. We figured that even though poo was not freely flowing I could stand every once in a while and try and push some out into the bag. At least I wouldn't have to keep reinserting the tube. It seemed to help relieve some of the pressure. This morning I stuck to a pretty liquid diet, I didn't take the antibiotics and my afternoon empty was a little better.

Good thing this weekend was that my mom was here to spread her mom love, and that mentally was so healing. I'm so thankful she was here, I miss her already.

So tomorrow I will call the surgeon again and see what to do about the antibiotics, the continued pain over the hip and next steps. Until then, I'm off to take some pain meds and keep resting and hope this goes away.