Found: 1 bellybutton

I've been away on a trip to my family recently, so haven't posted as much as I would have liked, but wanted to just post a little note on how things seem to be coming along quite nicely. Having my stoma and ileostomy bag are starting to become normal, helped massively by the fact that I'm now very nearly back up to full strength and my incision scars have healed to the point whereby they don't bother me at all.

The latter has made such a difference; one of the main reasons being that sleeping is now easy and natural. Despite the heat that we've had recently, I've found myself being more comfortable when I sleep: I can roll over, sleep on my side, and even sometimes for short periods on my stomach without feeling uneasy. I've also learned that my body is good at waking me when my bag is full, so I don't worry so much about leakages in bed. Depending on when I eat during the day, I usually have to get up once (sometimes twice) in the night to empty, which is a pain, but not painful (like the colitis was).

Anyway, the other thing I wanted to note was that, today, I found my bellybutton! This may seem ridiculously un-noteworthy to those of you with obvious bellybuttons, but I had seriously thought that the surgeons had sewn mine up, to be lost forever beneath a bumpy scar (as I had an emergency operation, I couldn't have key-hole surgery, so have a big scar down my tummy). But... no! Whilst in the shower this morning, I went to scratch my scar and there it was, a tiny, 1cm-long bellybutton. It's not the same, obviously, but it's there, and that made me feel oddly happy.