#colostomy

For clothing Maternity pants are your friend - they have a very soft band that doesn’t bother your stoma and helps cover you extra as well as not cutting off your circulation when sitting. You can also find a maternity rack at Deseret Industries due to Mormon Mom’s donating their old clothing. Your thrifting finds will vary. Buying new is a reliable way of finding them but more expensive.

I personally have a brown corduroy pair from GAP maternity and it’s cute and comfortable!

Yoga pants are another good option but not always what I want to wear.

If you have any kind of GI disorder, you are not alone. You share a lot of your struggle with my friend Hala's (@hala-15 )son, Abdul Aziz. Abdul Aziz is only seven months old, but he has already had several surgeries, and has a surgical opening in his abdomen.

Abdul Aziz has hirschsprung's disease, a congenital condition in which the nerves in the colon don't form properly, leading to an inability to pass waste. In rich countries, hirschsprung's disease is very manageable, with surgeries to either place a colostomy and remove parts of the colon. But in Egypt, where Abdul Aziz is living with his displaced palestinian family, surgeries cost 20,000 euro out of pocket.

Because of Abdul Aziz's condition, the seven month old child's "illness even prevents him from crawling or playing like children his age." why should Abdul Aziz continue to suffer when surgeries to allow him to pass waste would be so easy for a child in a rich country to access? illness and global poverty go hand in hand, part of colonialism is to inflict preventable debility on the colonized population, and nowhere is that more apparent than among the Palestinian people.

so if you can, donate whatever you can to Hala and Abdul Aziz. Their fundriaser has been shared by @90-ghost and @fairuzfan

Gray has a stoma from a colostomy, Wenda has mixed double incontinence (multiple causes), Brud has a Suprapubic catheter. Because I said so.

IF YOU LOOK UP THE PROCEDURES YOU WILL SEE OPERATION IMAGES BE AWARE.

NHS pages (THESE DO HAVE PHOTOS AND DIAGRAMS, BE AWARE)

https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/colostomy/what-is-a-colostomy/

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/urinary-incontinence/

I have the Gastrointestinal Disorders tag, however I don't have any books currently on the archive that feature/are about colostomy bags and feeding tubes. So I've gone away and done a bit of my own research, and hopefully these are more in line with what you're looking for.

As always, if there are any books on the list you would like more information on but cannot/are struggling to find it yourself, I'm more than happy to try my hand at it for you.

This is a link to the "books" section on the Ostomy/Connection website. This is a website created by people with various types of ostomies, for people with various types of ostomies. Or "ostomates", as they call them. I believe the books they advertise are all non-fiction and written by people with ostomies. They have a fairly extensive collection.

SH!T BAG is a young adult fiction novel by Xena Knox, based on the author's own experiences with bowel surgeries and living with an ostomy. Here is a link to the "about the book" on the author's website, and here is a link to the Goodreads page.

I've been told that Lani Lynn Vale (a popular romance author) has been known to include disabled characters in her work at times, including a character with a colostomy bag. I haven't found the exact book yet, if this is indeed true, but I have linked her website.

Bar some guides, all of the books I found that feature characters with feeding tubes where heavily geared towards young children and parents, mostly from the site My Tubey. The result that popped up the most was the children's picture book "The abilities in me: Tube Feeding", which I have linked here. I'm not sure how much these books would be of interest to you, but I'm happy to provide a full list if you would like!

Of course, I'll be on the lookout for more, but I hope that these can suffice for now.

Most ostomy patients worry about life after an ostomy. What will it be like? Will I have to change a colostomy bag in public? How do you manage life with a bag attached to your belly? Whether your ostomy is temporary or permanent, there’s a lot to learn. But within a few weeks, most patients are pros. After an ostomy, you can do everything you did before. You just have to learn some of the basics…