When I was first faced with the decision of going through with having my colon removed and getting an ostomy, I was very concerned about the scars the surgery would leave behind. I don’t consider myself a particularly vain person, but as a 26-year-old woman, this was a very difficult idea to come to terms with. I was married less than 2 years at the time and I was afraid of living a life where I no longer felt confident or attractive.
For me, this was one of the more difficult things to accept. But ultimately, I realized that it didn’t matter. It was a small price to pay for feeling better and no longer living with the day-to-day symptoms that I had grown very accustomed to.
I have also been very blessed in the course of this whole thing. For one, I have an incredibly supportive husband. He has always assured me that it would make no difference in our relationship and it never has. On top of that, I have a great surgeon right around the corner from me who has walked me through this whole process and done both surgeries completely laparoscopically. There was a chance both times of needing to have a larger incision, but neither time was it necessary, and I’m very thankful for that.
Such of big part of my recovery was allowing my new scars to
heal. For a while they were covered in this hardened gel and a little sore to the touch or when I would twist the wrong way. It’s hard to tell in the picture, but I have 10 small incisions now: 6 from the first surgery to remove my colon and 4 from the second one to remove the final new inches of colon and my rectum. Plus, my belly button has been opened twice and of course there is the ileostomy itself.
I have come to realize that these scars say a lot about me. And I’m sure that your scars say a lot about you. Every scar comes with a story, a memory. Our scars make us who we are. And I’m not only talking about physical scars. We have many scars on our heart and in our mind. Some of these we proudly show off as a sort of trophy of our accomplishments. Others we prefer to keep hidden and perhaps some day forgotten. But regardless of that, every scar has changed the course of our life and is proof of what we’ve been through and what we’ve endured and made it through.
I wouldn’t change one scar. While there are things in my life I wish I would’ve handled differently or avoided altogether, I can never regret those decisions or experiences because they have made me who I am. And I’m OK with that.