Forecast: After A Week Of Precipitation, Outlook Unclear

  I have wrote, and rewrote this post multiple times just to erase it and start from scratch again and again.  I am having a real hard time putting into words exactly what I want to say. I either write too much, not enough, or end up going off on some tangent that has nothing to do with the point of what I am trying to write in the first place. I am treating this blog more like an English paper where I am expecting to be graded, or maybe I am just full of excuses. So, here is what I've decided to do, I am going to write straight from the heart, put everything out there, and not worry about anything else. With that being said, I apologize ahead of time for any grammar issues, over usage words, or anything that makes this blog harder to read than it should.

  To make sure this all doesn't seem as if its coming out of left field, I will give a little back round while trying not to become overly verbose.  Off and on since I was nineteen I have been dealing with bladder issues stemming from my original diagnosis, with most of what I had to deal with being nothing more than a U.T.I.  About a year prior to the surgery for my "end ileostomy" I started feeling discomfort in my penis, testicles, bladder, flank, and kidney.  I was urinating up to twenty times a day, and even when I wasn't urinating, I still felt as if I had to. In a short amount of time my symptoms which began as discomfort, started becoming more serious and were now causing me pain. From that point I met with my urologist who ran me through a gamut of tests, everything from  a simple urinalysis to a cystoscopy, all of which came back normal.  After talking to my urologist about potential ways of dealing with the unknown, I told him about my upcoming surgery to receive an ileostomy. He was glad to hear about my decision to have this surgery, not only because he knew of my previous struggles, but also, by having a diverting ileostomy my bowel would no longer press against my bladder which would at the very least give me some relief from what I was going through, so I was told.

  I have now been out of the hospital for almost three weeks, and I  have to say that for the first week or so I thought he was a genius, as I had no pain. Then slowly but surely a little of the discomfort started to come back, but still was nothing compared to what I was dealing with before. If things stayed this way I would be more than okay with it, but as you can probably tell by the tone of this post, that's not the case.  This past Monday, labor day, I woke to find myself in a situation that I couldn't believe, I wet the bed, not only did I wet the bed Monday, I wet the bed all but two days this week, with the worst day being Thursday. There was so mush urine Thursday morning, that if I didn't already have a mattress cover from my days of fecal incontinence, my mattress would have been ruined. 

  Look at me now, not only can I  defecate from my abdomen, I can now add bed wetting to my "bag" of tricks. This is sure doing a lot for my self-esteem, especially considering the fact that I'm  single.  Maybe I'll get lucky and meet a girl who likes to get peed on. I can see it now, as it would go something like this: "what's that? oh, you liked to get peed on, well then you are in for a treat, because I am so good at peeing that I can do it in my sleep." There is no way she could refuse, I even made a poem out of it.  All kidding aside this is killing my self esteem, staying positive while living the rest of my life with an ileostomy is one thing, but now I'm looking at the possibility of having urinary incontinence. This situation is making me feel as if I had surgery only to be able to trade in one type of diaper for another.

  Unless there is a simple fix, I don't know how well I'm going to handle this. I mean really, lets take a look at how I've been dealing with this so far this week: sleeping all day in hope that this will all just disappear on its own, cursing the situation while fighting back tears, or here is the best one, trying to convince myself the world owes me something just because I don't know how to deal with the cards I've been dealt.  This whole week has just been one giant pity party that I've been throwing for myself. Why me? When will it stop? What else is going to happen?  For most of my life I have been able to pride myself on staying positive regardless of the situation, and that's something that I definitely haven't been doing this past week.

  So where do I go from here? Am I ashamed of that fact that I am now wetting the bed at thirty-five years of age? More than you know. Am I embarrassed to admit my personal issues to all of you?  Yes, even more so than the shame I feel. With that being said, you might ask why am I telling you this? Well the answer is two fold.  First, whether I tell you I pee myself when I sleep, or keep it a secret doesn't change the fact that I do, and maybe my brutal honesty will be therapeutic, and help me accept myself for who I truly am, or maybe I could help someone else who is dealing with something that they find shameful, embarrassing, or what have you.

  Bottom line:  We are who we are, we all have our insecurities, vulnerabilities ,and things about ourselves we wish we could change.  I just hope that some how we can learn to accept ourselves for who we are, (myself included) as we are, and will always will be our own harshest critics.  Lastly, I would like to end this by asking a favor of all of you. I would be honored if you felt comfortable enough to e-mail me @ kristoferadam78@gmail.com, and let me know a "secret" or something that you have a hard time talking about, and together we can try to help each other.