Every year the world comes together to raise awareness for all ostomies, their many diverse reasons, ages groups and hopefully try to remove the stigma one person at a time. We as ostomates aren’t alone in trying to do this; the companies that work within the ostomy sector, charities and bloggers all do something too! Saturday 6th of October is the day where stomas will be everywhere on social media and even out on the streets!
The theme this year is “Speaking Out Changes Lives” and it is so true, so many people have this idea people with stomas got them from cancer and are old – which is far from the truth nowadays. I and the many other advocates/bloggers/vloggers want to let people know that having a stoma be it temporary or permanent is NOT the end of the world and there are so many things out there that can help make life with a stoma easier.
The simplest but maybe hardest thing you by yourself can do to help remove the stigma attached to ostomies is to try and accept your stoma just for a day! Nobody expects anyone to like it all the time heck even I don’t like mine ALL the time! But accepting that it has allowed you to stay alive even if the stoma itself can be a bugger like I said is the hardest thing you can do (depending on your situation) but is the biggest thing you can do in showing ostomies aren’t the worst case scenario because let’s face it death is. If you are comfortable with your stoma a “bag out” photo is always a good talking point!
I am at work tomorrow but this week I have spent designing a poster that will go in my favourite local cafe; they are very industrial/steampunk inspired and have a move-able wooden rabbit that they have kindly allowed me to put a paediatric stoma bag on that will go alongside my poster. I tried to recreate the typography used in the Victorian era – which is hard when your doing it by hand and are very out of practice when it comes to typography. *This post is obviously going up the day before the big day but I will pop in to The Velveteen Rabbit Luncheon Club and take a photo tomorrow and edit this post with the rabbit and poster with how they have decided to display it!*
Colostomy UK are touring around London with the stoma bus and Salts Healthcare are doing a video made up of ostomates I believe; but the best way to find out what is going on is to search the #worldostomyday tag on social media!
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