There certainly are a lot of parts of life that affect who we become. Growing up simply in the midwest put a whole expectation and perspective on my life. When I was growing up, I loved sports. Sports were everything to me. I think I enjoyed the sport so much because of how competitive I was. This may have been because I was a younger child and it seemed to be always a fight in every part of my childhood. I hated losing and loved the feeling of victory, or winning. This feeling of victory and success drove me to play as much as I could. Even in a physical education class, it didn’t matter what game we were playing, I wanted to win. I would often go over the top to get a victory. I can’t say I enjoyed this about myself, but I couldn’t control it. I remember thinking “I’m just going to take it nice and easy today and have fun”. But more than anything winning was important and this is a good attitude to have especially now knowing that a stoma was going to be in my future.
But then something would trigger me and I would go into full-blown competitive mode. My classmates often said, “stop taking this so seriously, it’s just a physical education game, calm down”. In my own mind I truly thought of that as weakness. I didn’t appreciate their words, so I went even harder and took it even more seriously. My eighth-grade year of school, I decided to play baseball and run cross country for the junior high program at the exact same time. This was a complicated time that taught me a lot of lessons.
I must admit, it was a lot. But, as I said, I loved the competition and playing two sports at once gave me all the chances to compete I needed. Playing a sport involves the risk of injury. Playing two sports at once increases that risk exponentially. And I could not escape the risk. Towards the end of cross country season, we were on the track doing 400-meter repeats. We would run a 400, then rest one to two minutes, then take off for another 400. It was hard on my body and also my friendships as well. But it all went to create the me I am now.
The team was small. We had about 12 boys on the team and we would all start each 400 at the same time. Well, I had gotten tripped up by a teammate that was behind me in the first 20 meters of one of the 400’s. I ended up getting trampled on a concrete track. My entire abdomen was so skinned up. As I was looking for ways to help ease my pain, I came across really cool ostomy brands that had products that could help me out with my problem.
I am glad to have the ability to search and find these companies. These supplies are predominately used for folks that have had ostomy procedures. But I noticed one of the products looked like a thick belt that covered your entire abdomen. We decided to get one for me so my skin wouldn’t rub against my shirt. It was the knowledge of these companies that helped me out and to overcome hardship.
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