About Time…

If you followed my blog, then you might be very aware that it’s been years since I opened up my WordPress and typed out a blog. From posting on here on a weekly basis I faded away to nothing, for a long time I didn’t even post on my personal Facebook or other social media accounts.

I clammed up, closed down and turned my back on all those people who had followed and supported me for the years I’ve written on here.. Not that there’s exactly thousands; but I did have some regular readers who were wondering where I’d disappeared to and if something had happened? I’m sorry to those who reached out worried, I think I messaged everyone back.

Honestly, something did happen. My life was turned upside down and inside out in a way I never expected it to be. A way I still can’t fully comprehend. Over the course of four months after my third stoma revision I became repeatedly and increasingly ill. I suffered with swelling on my brain, large abdominal blood clots and eventually severe sepsis that almost killed me.

These experiences shook me to my core. I still wake at night sweating and in tears from the nightmares of what I went through. I’m not sure exactly how much I can say on the matter; both because I struggle to talk about it and due to the legal proceedings I’m in the middle of.

So instead of looking back, I’m going to look forward. Since my emergency surgery to clear out the sepsis and my long recovery, I’ve fought hard to retrieve my quality of life. I’m finally starting to feel like I’m at the point where I’m tipping the scales in my favour.

Despite recovering from a life threatening illness and two major surgeries I still enrolled for my art degree last September. I’m now ready to head into my second year and am wanting to challenge myself not to rely on my electric wheelchair whilst in college.

Hopefully I can focus on my future and making adaptations to live my best life with the level of health that I now have. I want hospitals firmly in my rear view mirror!

There’s lots I plan to share on here. I want to open up about what is been like to live with a stoma and how I found travelling abroad. Body confidence issues, both around the bag and also around being a disabled woman in general. Plus how I feel about my fluctuating health and how that affects my mental state. But bare with me, I still feel like I’m taking tentative steps towards becoming the open person I once was.