Throw kindness around like confetti.

I write this post as I sit on the toilet with tears streaming down my face. I don’t write this for sympathy or as means to get attention. I felt the need to write this post because I know there are so many people out there that struggle like I am and I don’t think enough people talk about it. They may not be cancer survivors like me but they may have crones, ulcerative colitis, fibromyalgia or osteoporosis. These are just some of many silent ailments that people struggle with each day.

I have had the pleasure of inviting a lot of new people into my life over the past year which I am so grateful for but most of these people do not know my full story. So here is a condensed version of my last four years to catch you up before I go onto why I am really writing this post.

My health gradually declined in subtle ways during my pregnancy with Isobel, around her first birthday things really started gaining speed and by the time she was 15 months old I was going to the bathroom up to 24 times a day and could not last out of bed for more than an hour at a time. May 2014 (1 week after I turned 26) I was diagnosed with stage 2 colorectal cancer; 2 weeks later I had my entire large bowel removed, a j pouch created and a temporary stoma formed; July 2014 I was told it was stage 4; two weeks later I started incredibly intense chemo therapy that had me hospitalised during each round; Oct 2014 I was given the news that by some miracle there had been a mistake and I was downgraded back to stage 2; April 2015 I had my stoma reversed and j pouch connected up; Sept 2015 had my hip reconstructed (unrelated to cancer); April 2016 I had two major hernia repairs where they had to reopen my 24cm scar running down my tummy and put a big piece of mesh in there; June 2017 I had a uterine prolapse done to stitch things back into place and was told I may not be able to conceive another baby naturally. During each of these surgeries there were major complications such as extreme ongoing nerve damage, serious pain management issues and days spent in HDU, collapsed lungs, accidental bladder slices and many other things.

A basic explanation about my bowel function – they removed my large bowel entirely, pulled my small bowel down and stapled it into a j shape and stitched it to the back side of my vaginal wall and my rectum. This small ‘j’ area they created is now my reservoir where my poo collects. Most people don’t know this but your large bowel is actually the place where your poo turns from runny diarrhoea into what we all lovingly refer to as a ‘log’. So without this function it means I shit water every time I go to the toilet. This will never change and is my new ‘normal’. I have had to train my j pouch to hold as much liquid shit as possible so I do not have to go to the bathroom every 5 minutes. This training was horrendously painful and not a fun time but I am lucky and have managed to get myself to a place where I only need to make a trip to the bathroom between 5-7 times a day as long as I don’t have any dairy or certain other foods. Fun fact, because of this I have lost the ability to cock a leg and let a good old fart rip. Yeap, gone are the days where I can ever trust a fart again or perform a dutch oven. So now the gas that forms in my small bowel/j pouch is kind of mixed up with all my poop and comes out when I sit on the loo – boy does it make for a good show when I am using a public loo! If there is too much gas stored in my j pouch then this can become incredibly painful and I am crippled with waves of agonising pain hitting me until I go to the loo.

24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 52 weeks a year I live with the constant feeling that I need to go to the loo. You can all think back to that time you had a tummy bug or food poisoning and the skill it took to hold on to that burning liquid shit while you scrambled to get to the loo in time to save your underwear – yeah that’s my life on a constant basis. Now I may have adjusted my mindset and learnt to deal with it but that doesn’t make it easy. I am basically always a little bit on edge and I always make sure I know where the closest toilet is whenever I go somewhere new. Want to know all the best public loo’s in Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, Central Otago and Auckland – Ill draw you a map. So as you can imagine I kind of live life constantly on the edge a little.

So what’s triggered this post? Well 2 days ago I got my period. That may not seem like much of a big deal to you all but it’s actually a really serious situation for me. 3 years ago they inserted an IUD to stop my periods all together because we found that each time I got my period I was crippled with pain. I don’t say crippled lightly – I seriously mean bed ridden and on serious pain relief for 7 days every month. All you girls out there can relate to the good old period farts? Yeap those are a thing guys, we get WAY gassier while we are surfing the crimson river. Well this still applies to me and so of course with a gas build up in my j pouch during a period I was in agony. The other major issue with my period was that because my j pouch is stitched to my vaginal wall it’s kind of got a close intimate relationship with my lady bits. The uterus, ovaries and love tunnel all get pretty angry and inflamed when Aunt Flow visits and so this inflammation affects my j pouch as well and contributes to the blinding pain. The last three years have been easier due to not having my period but for some reason this week it decided to show up – while I was at my daughter’s first ballet class completely unprepared (I’ll leave that there for you to conjure up your own images).

Another fun little side effect when I’m on the rag? The urge to go to the loo is a LOT worse but going to the toilet doesn’t actually bring me any relief and at least half the time nothing happens because I was only sitting in here half an hr ago but my j pouch is so aggravated it’s sending me the wrong signals.

So it’s while I sit on the loo during one of these moments, in agony even though I am dosed up on oxy and I think to myself- no one actually knows what is happening with my insides on any given day. You could be having a conversation with me and I appear to kind of get distracted or lose interest – but really I am clenching my butt cheeks and trying not to double over and grasp my tummy. This then led me to think about how many people in my life, even my closest friends and family – think that just because I don’t have cancer anymore that I am back to normal. They forget that I will never be normal again and that my day to day struggles will never get easier. I may sit there in a job interview with a complete stranger, nice clothes on, full face of makeup, firing out amazing answers to every question I am asked and charming the socks of this person – all while I am screaming on the inside for him to hurry the hell up because my guts are turning in knots and I am only just managing to keep a smile on my face. He has absolutely no idea how much is going on side my body and mind right now. I just appear to be a well dressed stay at home looking to get back into work.

This led me to think about those around me. I know I have friends and family that have physical and mental health issues that you cannot see any signs of. I have no idea how many people I pass in the supermarket or roaming the aisle of Kmart that are drugged up on heavy pain meds, in a daze thinking about how they are going to manage to walk back to their car. We are all so quick to react to people who piss us off;  someone walking too slow around the mall; stopping suddenly in the aisle of the supermarket; not using their indicators or driving too slow on the motor way. Who’s to say that person walking slowly around the mall has not just had one of their organs removed and this is their first public outing in weeks? That person suddenly stopping in the aisle of the supermarket may have just had an extreme wave of pain wash over them and they are trying hard not to pass out. The person making a turn into their driveway and forgot to indicate – he may be concentrating hard on not shitting himself before he gets to the loo inside. The person driving slowly on the motorway may be on a high dose of oxy and making sure they are extra cautious driving at high speed.

Basically the point of this post is to remind people to just be kind. You have your shit going on and everyone else around you is struggling with their own piles of turd. Remember to be patient and considerate when a stranger does something to piss you off, chances are they are not doing it to simply be a dick – they may have just found out their partner has cancer and only has 6 month to live. We all have bad days but on those days when we feel like we are on top of things we should be going out of our way to do kind deeds for others. Bake some cupcakes and give them away to strangers who are struggling. Help someone carry their groceries to the car. See an item that’s fallen off a shelf in a store – don’t step over it, pick it up! There are so many small things we can do to help those around us and you never know how much those small deeds mean to that person. Smile at everyone you pass whether you feel like smiling or not – you never know how badly that person needed to see a friendly face right then.

Throw kindness around like confetti.