*Trigger warning* naked stoma in post.
September in the awareness calendar is Urology one of the biggies; yet not many people know much about our waterworks and related organs – often this includes me! What I love about the way awareness is raised in this instance is that people affected share black and white photos relating to their specific urological condition.
So obviously urostomies are mentioned a lot as well as nephrostomies and catheters. Then there is the range of conditions from cancers to kidney failure. I think the choice of it being black and white makes it stand out from the crowd and I find myself pausing and reading the captions as I’m scrolling through social media.
So what is urology and what falls under that category? Well according to wikipedia it is:
Urology, also known as genitourinary surgery, is the branch of medicine that focuses on surgical and medical diseases of the male and female urinary-tract system and the male reproductive organs.
Not going to lie but I didn’t know it included the male reproductive organs; like I kinda gathered the prostate but I think I just thought that they had their own branch in gynaecology! So there you have it I learnt something new today!!
The Urology Foundation estimate that 1 in 2 of us will be affected by a urological condition in our lifetime and that is an insanely large amount of people when you think about it. I mean we all pee, we all have the chance of UTI’s and then there is kidney issues and sadly cancers and incurable conditions.
I have two favourite urology advocates and they are Rachel Jury from Rocking 2 Stomas (yes it helps she is my best friend) she has Autonomic Neuropathy which is where her organs are slowly shutting down, she also had pre cancerous mutated cells which was a pre cursor to her bladder being removed and her urostomy formed.
Rachel’s urostomy with a catheter in due to stenosis
Then there is Anita Brown from My Big Fat British Bladder Tumour; she at the moment is talking a lot about dying in dignity because it is something she feels strongly about as she has stage 4 bladder cancer. She tweets a lot about the signs of bladder cancer.
As nice as it would be for us all to be happy and healthy it sadly isn’t how the world works but these awareness months or weeks or even days can allow you to learn something new; like I do with this one. Are you affected by a urology condition either yourself or a loved one?
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