I was discharged yesterday after getting my colostomy on December 12th. I came home at around 5:00 pm and watched the newest episode of sisterwives with my mom's. I had enough output that they felt comfortable sending me home. I took a video documenting the first time my bag was burped. Then I took a second video documenting the first time my bag was drained. I might upload them to a flash drive and put them in a time capsule so that scientists can find the videos in 1,000 years and feature them in a medical museum or something. I could also upload them to YouTube someday. For now I just am going to keep them.

Now that I'm out of the hospital I really miss the external catheter. It wasn't uncomfortable like the internal catheters and it was very convenient. Everyone is always saying negative things about hospital food, but most of the food was actually really good. Some of it was bad, but overall it was great. Mental hospital food is shit though. I know from experience.

Mentally I was doing good at the hospital and I thought I'd feel the same when I got home. I wouldn't say I'm doing horrible now, but it's harder than I thought it would be. I didn't think that I would worry about the bag leaking, but I worry about it sometimes. There's also more things I need to adjust to than I thought I would. Aside from emptying and changing the bag I thought it would be the equivalent of having tonsils and then getting them removed. It's not just a matter of making sure the bag is empty, but I have to move around differently and I have to figure out how fast my bag will make output. I'm also not confident in the integrity of the bag yet. I know it's probably sturdy, but Idk how much the bag can handle. I find myself afraid of it popping if I do a certain thing. Hugging people is a pretty nerve wracking thing right now, although with my post-op pain I wouldn't want to do that anyways.

I think I mostly just feel a lot of uncertainty. I'm new to this, my mom is new to this, my mother Is new to this, we have no idea what we're doing. I kept researching before surgery to look up as much as I can and I still feel unprepared. They show us how to change the bag and I'm thinking that surely it's not as easy as it looks. She said it is and I'm just not confident yet that I know what I'm doing.

I thought y'all would find the phone call I had with my brother amusing so that's what I'll leave you with in this post. Background information is that my brother is the only person in the house that does not like hearing about poop. I've had GI problems my whole life so my mom's are used to it. My mother also has dealt with it a lot at work being a special ed teacher. My brother has never been that way though. Last night he calls me and I love messing with him, so I decided to do just that. He said "Hey can I ask you a question?" and I said "Is it about how I poop through my stomach now?". He said "No, I don't want to know about that.". We talked about the thing my brother was calling me about and he said "Can I ask you another question?", so I said "Is it about how I poop through my stomach now?", and he said "Really, I'm good, I don't wanna know.". Then we talked about something else a little longer and the phone call was over.