For years I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a blog but I never followed it through because there I always came up with a reason not to write about myself.  I haven’t done the travelling I wanted to do, I haven’t accomplished financial greatness and I haven’t had the romantic heartache that most girls were having from about the age of 11.  I have never tried drugs, I haven’t even smoked a cigarette, so yeah, why would anyone who has done all of those things and more want to sit and read anything about me?

Well writing a blog is a funny thing.  It’s only when you sit and start to write that you realise life isn’t always about the things I’ve just mentioned.  Its not all sex, drugs, travelling and cigarettes; you don’t have to be a CEO or have a Doctorate or speak and understand fifty languages to show people you’ve lived a life…

(NB – as I write this its 8:10pm and I’m making a note for myself to re-read that last sentence because I had a conversation with Mum earlier where I described the opposite so tomorrow I need to remind myself of this moment)

…sometimes life looks different for us, that’s why we’re…

“individuals”

In 1989 I was seven.  I only remember one thing about being seven and it wasn’t my birthday, it’s nothing to do with my friends or my toys or whatever me and brother got up to when we were playing in the street with the other kids.  No, the one thing I remember about being seven has to be the biggest discovery that no other seven-year-old can possibly have discovered.  It was a discovery that was both entertaining and an escape.  It played out like a gentle hum in the back ground of my younger years, it mapped out my teens, it created an unbreakable connection to one very special man and in 2016 a life long dream happened in a way I never imagined possible. 

What was the discovery?

Coronation Street

I’m sorry if it’s not what you expected and by all means log off the blog and I won’t be offended but if you are curious to know what the hell I’m on about then take a seat and I’ll tell you a story…

One night I switched on the TV (this is back when I was seven by the way) and the police walk into a house and tell a woman her husband has been stabbed and he’s died and obviously the woman is devastated but the most gobsmackingly astonishing moment of the scene is when the camera pans behind her and the son of the dead guy is listening on the stairs.  Shock horror.

Well I was gripped.  I didn’t know what this was.  Who were these people?  Who was the boy?  Why had the guy been stabbed?

The following day I went to see my grandparents and I was excitedly retelling this story to my grandad who informed me this little gem of televised discovery was Coronation Street.  I remember him filling me in on the characters and the storylines and he called it Corrie.  That in itself was just pure genius. 

When I was a kid I was lucky enough to have a TV in my bedroom.  Back in the 80’s and 90’s if you had a TV in your room you were royalty.  Well I didn’t feel like royalty but I got to watch Corrie whenever it was on and the next day I’d sit by my grandad’s chair and we’d talk about it and I’d sip the incredibly sweet tea from his mug that was as big as my head (I think he put about six sugars in there when I was really young) and I’d feel alive and it was a moment we shared all the way up to when he died in 2005.

My grandad was a saint, that’s how I felt.  He was the most beautiful man I have ever met in my entire life and I mean no offence to any other man in my life but even the characters I created in the stories I wrote and still write, were never a patch on the man my grandad was.

I left home at 18 to go to university and this time I had no TV with me.  Every day at 6pm my grandad would ring my mobile and he would read to me the notes he’d taken from the last episode of Coronation Street.  When I moved to Edinburgh to work the Fringe Festival we would work our phone call around my crazy shifts.  When I was in hospital with a crippling bout of Bernard the Bipolar my grandad would find all the change he had in his house and give it to me so I could call him on the pay phone on the ward and he would read every episode of Corrie to me so that wherever I was in the country or even out of my mind, I never missed a single thing that happened on Coronation Street.

December 2016, I’d been married for about a month, we’d been living in our house for just over a year, I was a Volunteer Employment Ambassador for Bipolar UK and I’d been doing my public speaking thing for almost two years but there was nothing much to shout about.

I have no idea where I was when I got the call but I was definitely in a car when Sandra from Bipolar UK called me and asked if I could go to ITV at Media City with her on Friday and meet with some writers who were doing a storyline with a new character who has Bipolar.  I asked her which soap – casually, obviously – she says…. Yeah you guessed it…

Coronation Street

Well as you can imagine, I lost all sense of decorum and any volume control on my voice completely went off the scale but, seriously! Don’t throw Corrie into the ballpark and expect me not to throw it right back out! Please.  But then she says…

“Now you can’t tell anyone about this Kat.  It has to be completely confidential we may even have to sign something to make sure we don’t talk about it.”

“Yeah, yeah, absolutely, that’s no problem.  I won’t say a word.”

Well there were at least two other people in the car that day so that was that promise out of the window!  But in the lead up to that day I swear I didn’t tell anyone else that I was going to ITV to speak some writers about Bipolar.  I swear…

You know how kids get on Christmas Eve when Santa is going to creepily break into their home, eat the contents of their parents fridge and then leave them a stack load of presents before he goes off to an infinite number of other houses and does the exact same thing?  Picture that level of excitement… because that was me the night before I went to the ITV studios.  I was a just like a kid on Christmas Eve.

Admittedly some aspects of that day are a little blurred.  I had to look like a professional, I was supposed to advise these writers (the verbal geniuses of my most favourite soap in the world) on how to conduct a realistic representation of my illness. 

Anyone who knows me well knows my ultimate dream growing up was to be a writer, I wanted to write for Coronation Street.  By this point, at the age of 34 I knew I was never going to achieve that and this is the opportunity so much.  Bernard has prevented me from doing so much with my life, if things had been different maybe I could have fulfilled that dream, we’ll never know; but this was the next best thing.

That first visit we were given lunch.  It was a buffet.  Heck.  I hate buffets.  Give me a plate full of food and I’ll eat it but for God’s sake don’t ask me to queue up in a strange environment behind all these creative professionals and expect me to somehow not stick out like a sore thumb.

Buffets are like first dates.  Why do people go out for meals on a first date?  You’re nervous so you can’t eat or you’re so self-conscious you feel like you shouldn’t eat, or maybe if you do you’ll drip sauce down your new top or you’ll get lettuce stuck in your teeth.  Buffets are the same.  If you put too much on your plate you’re greedy but you have to put something on there because otherwise you’ll be weird and ungrateful.  I went for minimal sustenance.

So we go into this room and it is exactly like you’ve seen on TV.  Massive room filled with tables in a large square and they’re covered with white cloths, so I also can’t spill anything off my plate because then I’m messy as well as everything else.  The room fills up with people, they smile and nod and they eat their lunch and once the room is to full capacity there’s a man sitting next to me and he introduces Sandra and me and explains we’re from Bipolar UK.  Sandra talks about the charity and I have no idea what she’s saying because all I’m doing is looking around the room at the people wearing funky glasses, quirky tops with stripes and they’re the exact replica of what I wanted to be when I was growing up.  At some point they opened up their MacBook Pros, switched on their iPads and in my head I’m thinking…

“I still write in a Moleskin and think it’s cool.”

I look down at my plate baring a king prawn next to a slice of cucumber expertly curled and a cherry tomato that keeps running away from the fork shaking in my hand and I know full well, there’s no way that food is meeting my mouth in this room.

That room was my dream.  In that room I told myself that even though I hadn’t achieved what I wanted to, I was part of something so big I could never describe to anyone how it big it really felt.

I imagine to the writers in that room, it was just another storyline.  Just another bunch of characters they had to find dialogue for.  The thing is, when you’re putting a label like Bipolar on a character you have to get it right.  If you get it wrong and you upset the audience you’ll lose that audience and the whole show falls apart.  That’s why they ask real people to go in and tell them what the illness is really like. 

I’m a co-facilitator for the Manchester Bipolar UK support group and every month (pre-Covid) I always stress that everyone’s Bipolar is different.  You’ll never get two people the same so getting a character to represent an illness and also be an individual is tricky. 

I got to tell them my facts.  I got to show them the way to introduce the character so that they didn’t anger every Bipolar person in the country.  They laughed when I talked, they thought I was funny.  Someone in the room casually said…

“I think you should be sitting here”

…and I thought…

“Yes, I probably should.”

How do you go back to your office job on Monday having been in that room?  How you copy and paste and click send into countless emails after you’ve been with a bunch of writers who you should be sat next to not in front of?

Reality sucks…

Wednesday 5th March 2017

Let’s cut to the chase.  Sandra and I were invited to go back to the ITV studios, only this time it’s a little different.  This time we’re meeting with the researcher, two producers and the actress playing the Bipolar character; Connie Hyde.

(Little bit of filling the grey bits in for those who don’t know, Connie was playing Gina who is Sally Metcalfe’s sister)

Believe it or not this was less intimidating than the square table situation.  While we were waiting to be greeted in the lobby Eileen walks past and then Rita from The Cabin waves bye to the receptionist and then Ken gets in to a really flashy car and all of this just blows my mind because I have never been any good with celebrities. Star struck just doesn’t cover it.

Dominic the researcher took us up to the canteen for lunch, this time I got wise and said I was too excited to eat (I said I was less intimidated, I didn’t say I was composed), he did manage to make me a cup of tea and I wondered if I could take the ITV mug home with me (I didn’t).  Sandra was talking away and I looked around and in one corner Eva was laughing with Peter Barlow, a few tables down Gail was eating a sandwich and then in walked Audrey and I just thought…

“How the hell am I going to look normal?”

People always tell me…

“You know celebrities are human, they poo and wee just like the rest of us.”

Yeah, I know that.  But right at that moment, when Rita walked past me she looked exactly the same as she does on screen, just perfect and I tried to tell myself that she is just like me only I kept thinking, her poos are probably golden!  I’d been watching her on my television for 27 years, I’d seen practically every husband, every bad choice, every humorous comment she’d made within that time, the woman was royalty! So how was I going to conduct myself in a professional and sensible fashion when I was smiling like an animated Meerkat on speed!

I have no idea how we got to the next part of the building.  I remember shaking hands, I remember smiling and being shy but trying not to be because I’m trying to portray this punk-ass public speaker type image to show people I’ve achieved something even though I’m the one in the room with the diagnosis.  Sandra’s the messenger, she’s the one who tells people the facts but she doesn’t have the real insight into the illness, that’s my job.  I’m the one who has to tell the story and try and show these people all angles of my condition because remember, no-one is the same and while I can’t represent everyone who has the disorder, I am in that room to represent myself, at least.

The room overlooked the whole of Media City. Everything was calm, it was all still and strangely, so was my heart.  It’s a funny thing being me.  I freak out and then something in me just changes.  Like going on stage before I do a talk.  In the lead up to it I question myself a million times,

“Why are you doing this?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Why are you doing this?”

And then, right before I step on the stage I think to myself…

“…because there’s a reason for it…”

Everyone has dreams, writing was always mine, but I was not a writer I wanted to be and I’ve always felt that Bernard took that away from me.  Yet here I was using the one thing that takes no prisoners and destroys everything in its path; the thing that has almost ended my life on so many occasions and I’m about to use it to influence a television program and a whole team behind it into creating a realistic representation of Bipolar Disorder.  The very thing I would kick to the curb in a heartbeat.

That was the reason behind my sense of calm.  My job wasn’t to write but I was still there to tell a story.

When Connie Hyde walked into the room she had a folder in her arms.  She shook my hand as she sat down in front of me and she opened up the folder.  Sandra went through the technicalities of the illness… and then the floor was mine.  

I’d be lying if I said I can remember what Connie asked me but I remember she started to write.  I gave her my story.  I told her how Bernard came about, I told her about all the weird things I’ve experienced, the obsessions with drag queens and swans, the compulsion to save the world, the six admissions to locked psychiatric wards, losing friends, losing myself, losing hope.

I remember looking directly at Connie, into her kind eyes and at her pen as she wrote down my words.  I remember glancing to my left and one of the producers was crying when I told them that the system gave up on me and my life was deemed pointless.  Then she laughed when I told them all that I’d achieved everything they said I never could, I even touched my face with my left hand so they could see my wedding band to prove it.

That room was incredible.  The feeling was indescribable.  Who would believe this?  It was so far off the scale that even though I was there I wasn’t sure if it was really happening.

When we filed out of the room I handed Connie my business card.  It was my first business card, the one before the website, before the blog, before anything really.  Sandra panicked and wanted any contact to go through the charity but it wasn’t about drumming up business or staying in contact, it was about proof.  I wanted her to have something to remember me.  I thought maybe if she was struggling to get into character or she needed a reminder of the face behind one version of the illness, then she could look at my face on my business card and remember who told her their story.  I wanted her to remember that even though her role was a work of fiction, it was real for someone.

I think the most difficult thing about this process was not being able to tell anyone.  God that was hard!  It’s like someone sitting on a wasp and then telling them not to move.  It’s practically impossible. 

When Gina walked onto the cobbles and the monthly meeting of the Bipolar group came round I knew one of the topics of discussion would be the latest Coronation Street storyline.  By this point I could tell everyone and everything that I’d been part of the process and I’m not going to lie, I told that story with a smile as wide as slice of watermelon!

But it’s a sad moment when you’re revealing your best kept secret and you realise 90% of the room question why it was you who had been picked to go.  The simple fact is I’m an ambassador in the north west and that’s it.  It’s the charity’s red tape, it’s just geography, it’s nothing personal and it’s not about picking favourites; I was just local.

The best thing about being part of the…I guess you can say…storyline or maybe the plot, was sitting in my living room watching it play out and the actions on the screen mirrored the things I’d talked about.  I was proud of the writers because they showed they’d listened to what I had to say and I’d been taken seriously in a world where that’s sometimes difficult.

There’s one thing that I loved about watching Gina on my TV, it was like watching me.  I don’t know if it was intentional or if I’ve seen something that wasn’t really there but so many people asked me if Gina’s obsession with dogs on plates was a representation of my love for swans? If it was, I’ll take it!

I’m not going to lie; I was gutted when Corrie didn’t take Gina’s story to the heights that it could have gone.  They could have shown the soap world how to really do a Bipolar storyline because there was so much they could have done with it.  Maybe they forgot about it amongst all the other storylines?  Maybe they changed their minds or maybe they were doing what I try to do, prove to the world that you can live well with a mental illness.  Who knows? 

I wrote an article for Bipolar UK’s magazine Pendulum about my involvement with the show and I sent it to Connie.  Over the last couple of years we’ve had a couple of messages here and there and that’s been nice, every message she tells me I helped her and inspired her but I can’t take the credit for her work.  The day we met she looked as though she wanted to get her character right.  She wanted to portray Bipolar Disorder realistically because it’s so easy to get it wrong and I know she’s reading this because I asked for permission name drop her; so I want everyone to know that she did a damn good job playing Gina and should she ever return to the cobbles, I’ll be glued to my telly like a mask that sticks to your face when you breathe in. 

When I started public speaking being an inspiration never entered my mind, I just wanted to tell my story in the hope that people would listen.  It’s incredible how many doors its opened, it’s given me so many opportunities that I still find unimaginable.

I haven’t travelled the world but I’ve had some damn good holidays.  I’m not rich but I can pay my mortgage. I’ve never had my heart broken and I count myself lucky in that department.  I may never have tried drugs or smoked a cigarette but come on, have you seen what those things do to people? 

When I started writing the blog I didn’t know if I had anything people could relate to.  I didn’t think I had anything that people would want to read about, I felt like I had nothing and I’d achieved nothing.  But what is an achievement?

Is it buying a fast car and having a posh job?  Is it being able to buy expensive jewellery because you’ve earned the money to do it?  Is that what is says in the dictionary?  Are those the things it lists?

You can label it whichever way you want to but in reality the definition of achievement can’t always be found in the dictionary.  Sometimes we have to define achievement according to how we live our lives as an individual.  No two Bipolar people are the same and that goes for human beings in general.  We spend so much time comparing ourselves to others and talking ourselves out of things that we don’t realise we could be missing out on something wonderful if we were just brave enough to take that chance and see what’s out there.

These days I think outside of the box.  I gave up trying to be something I’m not a long time ago and I’m happier now than I ever was because I set my own goals and, if I reach them I tick them off a list because maybe achievement is about never giving up. 

Maybe achievement is about trying to live life the way we want to and seeing what comes our way.  Maybe its about trying not to be afraid.  Maybe its about throwing caution to the wind and embracing a cloud to get to the sun that eventually breaks through.

Maybe achievement is simple.  Maybe it’s about taking a risk and accidentally falling into your childhood dream and even though it looks different to the way you wanted it to, you can still make an old man proud…

Dedicated to Albert Patrick Mullineux

And thank you to Connie Hyde

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We all poo.  Whether we like to admit it or not we have to get rid of the meals we’ve eaten, because let’s face it; what goes in, must come out.

I know as I write this there will be people thinking…

“She shouldn’t have written this…”

“No one wants to know about anyone else’s bowel movements…”

“There are some things that you just don’t talk about!”

But isn’t that the whole point of this blog?  Isn’t that whole point of me doing the things I do and saying the things I say?

I never asked for Bipolar and I never asked for a stoma but this is what I have and there’s nothing I can do to change it; so to echo my own mantra, all I’m doing here is making the best of a bad situation in the hope that some good might come out of it. 

Pre- Stoma 2007

Today this isn’t about mental illness, today this is about poo; I’m sorry, but like I said we all do it and maybe it’s something we shouldn’t be shy about.  No one bats an eyelid when people talk about growing a baby and childbirth…

“It’s the most natural thing a woman can do.”

“The human body is so amazing to be able to create a brand-new human being.”

I agree. It’s true.  However, people fail to realise that a human’s ability to poo is also the most natural thing the body can do and it dictates how that person lives.  The most incredible thing about the body is its ability to process food and excrete it.  I can’t say it enough…

we all do it.

Its a common misconception that the rich and famous don’t go to the toilet because they are too beautiful but lets set the record straight right now…

Chris Hemsworth does it…

So does Harry Styles…

Zac Efron does it…and if you think Megan Fox doesn’t poo, you’re mistaken…

…because so does Jessica Alba…

And as for Arianna Grande…she’s not that tiny for no reason, she has to poo just like the rest of them.

This is not for the faint hearted, if you can’t talk bodily functions then the door is where you left it, turn right around and walk back through it because I am not going to apologise for anything I write on this one.

So let’s cut to the chase, why do I crap in a bag and how did it get to this point?

Constipation, that’s all it was.  I couldn’t poo. As a kid I’d go for days without going to the toilet.  I’d get back ache, stomach-ache, eating was a nightmare because everything was backed up with a week’s worth of chewed up meals.  Sometimes I’d get so blocked I’d throw up and sitting on plastic chairs at school was horrendous. 

When I was thirteen I hadn’t been to the toilet for around two weeks.  The pain was so bad my mum took me to the doctors who said there was something wrong with my Appendix but because they hadn’t burst there was no need to go to hospital.  A few days later the pain stepped it up a notch so Mum took me to A&E.  The doctor there was about to admit me until he realised there was nothing wrong with my Appendix, I just needed to go to the toilet.

Skip forward to 2010 when Bernard the Bipolar brain was rocking my world and my psychiatrist prescribed Quetiapine.  He ran through the side effects with me and I remember constipation was one of them, I waved away his comments and said…

“Oh I get that anyway, I’m used to it.”

But this is where the journey really started because he wasn’t wrong, my existing problem got a whole lot worse.  Bernard went back in his box and closed the lid but the nightmare of Connie constipation was playing out like a horror film with all the anticipation of fear but no scary resolution. 

The GP said…

“Eat more fruit and vegetables…”

But it didn’t work.  They said…

“There’s no cure for constipation.  It has to be managed with laxatives.”

And boy did I try them all…

Colon cleanse

Lactulose

Senna

Senna max strength

Dulcolax

Fybogel

Movicol

Bisacodyl

Picolax

Peanut enema

Laxido

Exlax

Colax

Fruits & Fibres Chewable cubes

Califig – I could drink up to a bottle of that a day

Suppositories

Then I tried all the seeds and supplements you can imagine but nothing helped.  It just got worse; pain, bloating, trapped wind and all I could do to ease the pain was have two hot water bottles, one at my back and one pressed between the desk and me trying to ease the pain of an air bubble that couldn’t pass through because there a mountain of fibrous fruit and veg standing in its way.

I was referred to a specialist, had a colonoscopy (that was fun), but the alleged cure he gave me didn’t help.  I went back to him a year later because the GP just said increase the laxido.  I was taking eight sachets a day when the limit was four and it still wasn’t helping.  He said…

“I’ve done everything I can… so I’m sending to a specialist unit at Wythenshawe hospital.  You’ll probably need a bag.”

This is probably someone’s worst nightmare.  Poo comes out of your bum, it’s not supposed to come out anywhere else but I wasn’t fazed by this; within about 20 seconds I already knew this was the only solution to get rid of Connie constipation.

Then shit got real.  After 32 years of people telling me to eat more fruit and veg and take more laxatives on top of more laxatives, suddenly I was actually being taken seriously. 

I walked in to the Gastroenterology department like a deer in the headlights.  How was this going to be any different to the GP telling me to eat more apples? How could I convince these people that I was at the end of the road and I couldn’t take any more?  I was taking 10 senna tablets on top of 6 sachets of Laxido and at least 12 Buscopan doses a day to try and cancel out the trapped wind. 

I never cried about my situation, I never shed a tear because if Connie was anything like Bernard and it wasn’t going away, then all I could do was deal with it.  

So I sat in the waiting room and I looked at the people around me and I thought to myself…

“This is what the last chance saloon looks like.”

I didn’t care who saw me, doctor, trainee, top dog surgeon or a banana farmer because I had no expectations, at this point all I’d had was a stack load of false hope and disappointment so when a twenty-something year old guy stepped into the waiting room with a folder in his hand, said my name wrong and smiled, I smiled back because even though he looked about twelve, he looked kind.

Dr Heywood

In the consultation room he opened up the folder baring the referral letter from the specialist and he looked at me and said…

“I used to work with Dr Loganathan.  He’s sent you to the right place.”

After that I can’t really remember what he asked me and I have no idea what I told him, but twenty minutes in he left the room and came back two minutes later with the top dog surgeon, Miss Telford.  I could tell instantly that she was not a woman who messed around; she knew what she wanted and she knew what to do in order to get it. 

She sat on a chair in front of me that had the height of a foot stool and she looked at me over her reading glasses, then she looked at the notes Dr Heywood had written and then back into my terrified eyes and said…

“We can definitely help you.”

I can’t explain it, that feeling of something so beyond relief whatever you want to say or however you try to say it, no one will understand because you’ll never be able to recreate that one single moment where you start to see there is light in the darkness.

That moment, hearing her words was like hearing the voices of a thousand angels singing and they were saying…

“Now you can cry.”

Treatment for any kind of health condition mental or physical is never straightforward and it’s never a short journey.  I had to have the most bizarre tests and investigations that I’d never heard of and to this day I wonder to myself…

“Who the hell came up with that one?”

Now if you can’t handle this next bit, look away because this is not for the squeamish.  I mean it, look away now because it is not pretty. 

I had to have balloons inflated into my bum to see how strong the muscles were, it turns out my muscles no longer worked.  I had to swallow 100 teeny tiny plastic pieces and then have an X-ray to see how fast they travelled. I had to stay in hospital for a day where I ate a meal of Smash and beans and had to blow into a tube like a drunk driver every half an hour to see how long it took to digest the meal over an 8 hour period.  It never digested.   I had to drink two cups of Barium Swallow in thirty minutes, it’s vile; it tastes like chalk with mixed with water, and sit in an elevated chair in front of a camera while people yelled at me and told me to clench my bum cheeks but then realised I couldn’t because I had no rectal muscles, a prolapse and a growth where I’d complained about a pain but it was never taken seriously.

When the nice young doctor asked if I would take part in some research he was doing I agreed because he’d been so nice and so helpful and I thought it was a…

“…you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours…”

…kind of situation.  But if I’d known it was going to be two very young and admittedly handsome doctors stuffing balloons up my jacksy that wouldn’t stay up there, I probably would have said no.  A lesson learned.

I have to say, at this point everything was laughable; it was the most bizarre situation I had ever been in and I had to work all the tests around my working week and the only saving grace was to be able to offload all of these ridiculous tales to my desk buddy Jayne, you may not realise it but you made the situation so much better.  Had I sat next to someone with a poo phobia, I know it would have been a very different story.

At this point it’s April 2016 and I’m supposed to walk down the aisle in seven months time.  Miss Telford tells me all of the crazy tests point to the only solution being an Ileostomy, so in technical terms they bring out a tiny blob of your small intestines which becomes the Stoma, it bypasses your colon and you poo from your tummy.

I wanted it done.  I wanted it quick so that I could have some kind of normal life.  I’d have cancelled my wedding.  I didn’t care, I was in that much pain I was willing to give up the dress and the day and disappoint every single person on the invite list so that I could get my squidgy blob and I’ll admit right here, right now, in front of everyone who came to my wedding that I was devastated when Miss Telford said…

“Get married first, then we’ll do it.”

Unless you know what it’s like to need an operation for something you’ve lost your grip on, you’ve no idea what it’s like to have  to wait twelve months for it.  All I could think was…

“What if I’m walking down the aisle and I have to turn back because I need a poo?”

“What if I don’t make it?”

“What if I make a mess of my dress?”

“How the hell do you poo in a wedding dress?”

But time stops for no one.  Life still goes on around us even though we might not want it to. Even though I really just wanted to stay at home and lie in bed where I was only a few steps away from the toilet, because at this point if I needed the loo there was no warning, there was no suggestion of it happening, it was a case of…

“Hi honey I’m hooooommmme”

And I had about five seconds to find the nearest toilet and hope I got to it in time.

People used to say that they never knew I was ill, they could never tell that I needed an operation or that I was in pain; when they saw the hot water bottles they just thought I was unusually cold.  I’m a good actress, I can pull the wool over most eyes but now I’d like to apologise.  I’d like to apologise to all the girls at STA who had to share the three cubicle toilet with me.  When you thought you heard a trombone to your left or a tuba to your right, it was me.

To anyone who walked past the franking machine and thought someone had chopped a body up and hidden it in the cupboard where we kept the bubble wrap, that was no dead body, that was me.

I’d like to apologise to my parents in law who have always been unbelievably kind but when I stayed at your house for the first time in 2013 and my bowel decided to work unexpectedly, I blamed the smell on Matt but it wasn’t Matt; it was me.

To everyone at BAND before the move from the YMCA, when I ducked out of your training sessions without time for an apology, it was me using all that toilet roll.

To the guy who pulled his jumper over his nose on the Trans Pennine Express to Edinburgh, I lied when I said…

“I think the guy before me ate something dodgy.”

It wasn’t a guy… it was me and I didn’t eat anything dodgy.

I apologise with my hand on my heart to the two old ladies at the North West Regional Speaking Competition for the Association of Speaking Clubs, you would have thought the fancy hotel would have more than two toilets for us to use and I really did think that you wouldn’t smell my eight day old poop over the half a bottle of Anais Anais you’d doused yourself in that morning.

I’m sorry to everyone who ever encountered my bowel movements. To the houses I went to, the shops I mooched in, the cafe’s I ate in, whatever you saw, whatever you smelt … it was me. It was all me.

It’s the 11th May 2017.  It’s surgery day.  It’s bye bye old life, hello new one! It’s farewell to sitting next to the toilet at work, it’s a shrug of the carefree shoulders to planning out the daily dose of laxatives depending on how close the nearest loo is. 

You have no idea what this operation meant to me.  People thought I was crazy; how could I be happy about this?  How could I want this?  Was there really no other option?   

Truth be told, I didn’t care what anyone else thought, it was no one else’s business.  I’d had 12 months to get my head around the idea of having a stoma, a squidgy blob poking out of my tummy.  A little red thing that looked like a weird willy. 

I had to cope with this somehow because there was no chance of a reversal and this was going to be with me for the rest of my life so I gave it a name.  I had this weird idea that if I gave it a character and a personality I could be friends with it, I could love it like I love any of my friends and it would make it easier to look at and to live with.

“Wilomena”

The first time I looked at her after the op she moved, like a little worm with a big head and I thought…

“Oh dear lord, why the hell is it moving?”

It’s the weirdest thing to get your head around.  You no longer poo out of your bum.  You don’t pump out of it either.  Literally nothing comes out of there because it all comes out of your stoma.  It pumps, it poops and it moves like your rectal muscles should.  It’s the same game but you don’t have to rush to the toilet because your toilet is attached to you.  And when I walk through the street and I feel my bag and it’s got last night’s meal in it I can smile with joy and I think to myself…

“Here I am, just shitting in the street.”

I love Wilomena; she has given me my life back and now there is laughter where there was once sadness.  I am endlessly amused by the unfortunate burps and raspberries she makes and I am thankful to my desk buddy James for finding it funny and embracing it when other people were horrified.  Thankyou for feeding her tea when she pushed my mug across the desk (oh yeah, sorry that was me).

Thank you to Nathan Langton for inviting me on your podcast back in August.  I spend my life talking about mental health and living with a mental illness but no one ever wants to talk about poo.  You have no idea how much the 45 minutes of poo related airtime meant to me.  The freedom, the laughter and being able to go into intricate detail about a stoma to someone who has never heard of one was liberating.

Sh!T Talk and Banter

I don’t look ill anymore, I have freedom, I don’t take laxatives and I’ve taken about 6 Buscopan tablets in the last three years. 

But sometimes life doesn’t always go to plan.  It likes to throw you those curveballs at every opportunity, so here’s a letter to Wilomena to finish things off…

Dearest Wilomena,

I’m sorry I sneezed. I’m sorry this made my stomach muscles flop and collapse but it really wasn’t my intention to cause either of us any harm.

I’m sorry we only had 16 months of matrimonial happiness.  I’m sorry that you get tired. I’m sorry that something in there is wrong and it’s changing the shape of your face.  I’m sorry you look like a really ugly tennis ball and I’m sorry you get the blame for all the pain; I know it’s not your fault.

I know we had a CT scan yesterday and that was an experience of its own but whatever the results are, if we have to part ways and another stoma takes your place just know that I have loved you.  If we have a hernia and Miss Telford can fix it so that we can stay together, you should know I will always love you. 

And if nothing can be done, if we remain in pain and you’re still as ugly as sin, don’t worry my dearest Willy, we will get through it together; the way we always do.

Lots of Love

Katerini

Post stoma – 2017
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