Fate

After yesterday's heart break I'm pleased to report that Big Fella is much happier today. Thanks mainly to the fact that Dr7 had said I will be allowed day release for his birthday. 

It looks like I'm going to be in hospital for another week or two because I need a new Hickman line putting in and there's a massive waiting list. Normally you're not allowed out of hospital with a central line but Dr7 has said he will write it in the notes and then write it again to make sure everyone knows he's happy for me to have day release. Just got to be careful with it that's all. 

So I messaged Big Fella and hubby messaged me to say that Big Fella was jumping around the room because he was so excited. Happy boy = happy mummy. 

This evening as I was face timing the kids, listening to Big Fella read his school book and Big Girl do her flute practice, a girl came to the end of my bed and asked if it was me that had been talking to her brother. 

I tentatively replied yes and hoped that the answer wouldn't lead to be getting my head kicked in or a load or verbal abuse. It didn't. It turned out that the bloke if been talking to was going to theatre tomorrow to have his bowel removed due to colitis and wanted to speak to me. 

He was in a side room and as I knocked on the door I could see the room was filled with family members. He stepped outside and asked if he could talk to me (we had previously spoken to each other in the corridor, often in the night when neither one of us could sleep)

So I sat with him and his sister and some other family members and told them a bit of my story (didn't want to terrify the poor guy!) and that having a bag didn't mean your life was over. They asked me loads of questions which I tried to answer honestly but I tried to show the positive side whilst gently suggesting that there would be some bad days too. But that anything is better than living with colitis when it's gotten that bad. 

I told him some stuff that the doctors don't, like the fact that even though you don't poo through your bottom your body still produces mucus and this will still pass out through the rectum. When this happened to me I totally freaked out and was on the phone to the Stoma nurse, only to be told it was normal. I told him I went swimming with my bag, that it didn't smell and that no one would know he had one unless he told them. 

Him and his family thanked me and said how nice it was to talk to someone who had been through it. I often wished I had been able to do that and that if I had then maybe emotionally I wouldn't have found it so difficult to come to terms with in the early days. 

So maybe it was fate that I was here at the same time as him. Maybe I had the line infection because in the grand scheme of things we were destined to meet. So maybe some good has come out of all of this crap. 

NB x