The Bag

I woke up after surgery in the ICU.

The pain of having my innards rearranged and sewn into their new places was very present.

“You have a new addition,” the doctor explained as he uncovered my stomach and revealed a bag covering a piece of flesh poking out of my body.

“This is called a stoma. It’s part of your large intestine that has been pulled through the skin of your abdomen so you can defecate.”

“Feces will go into the bag, which you will have to empty when it’s more than a third full.”

He pressed down on the bag, snapped it into place, and I winced in pain.

“It’ll hurt for a while,” he said, squeezing my arm before walking out.

A nurse came in.

“We need to get you walking tonight so we can get the air moving and avoid blood clots.” She smiled gently.

I nodded.

A bag to poop.

Last night I was a normal, functioning person.

And today…

…tell her what she’s won, Johnny!

Bessy will now ride around town with her shiny new colostomy bag full of poop hanging from the left side of her stomach!

The crowd roars.

Empty the bag…

That was another concept I was grappling with.

Play with my poop like a toddler.

I would definitely need to win the lottery to hire a round-the-clock colostomy bag attendant.

Suddenly, my stoma made a very loud, very long farting noise.

I jumped.

Holy crap. That had come out of me.

I rang for the nurse.

“That’s very normal. You’ll get used to it,” she said as she examined me and pulled the covers back over me.

Me? Get used to my stoma behaving like a teenage boy with a warped sense of humor?

No way.

“We need to get you up and moving,” she said again.

It was definitely a new world.

A large incision on the right.

A bag on the left.

I put on a brave face and asked the nurse to help me up.

It was brutal.

Every inch of my body screamed.

I pressed a pillow against my stomach and took my first step.

This was just the beginning.

And like so many roads before it in my life, it began with the courage to take the first step.

The bag and I had done that.

Next.