I am sprawled on the sofa watching television. My bag is full, a little liquid and a lot of air. I could go upstairs and change but it is late and I will change when I go up to bed which will be in a short while, so to release the pressure I let a little of the air out, a sort of fart. Lifting up my shirt I unclip the top of the bag and expel the air, being careful not to expel anything else.

I am officially discharged from all things medical as of today. Bed 9 in ITU that became Room 16 in the Paragon Suite that was a person has now officially disappeared.

The surgeon even muddled up my bowel with someone else today when he told me that I had half of my large bowel left which is interesting because I have a drawing by that very surgeon which shows that I have no large bowel, except a couple of inches at my bottom and a couple at the other end by the ileum, which is partly why a reversal of the colostomy is unlikely. They have moved on a long way from ‘Duncan bowel’. They are busy people and they have saved many lives since they saved mine and it is my replacement in Bed 9 of ITU that they need to concentrate on now and not the living.

In a way it is a positive thing that they are starting to forget me. In another it is alarming that something that was so traumatic for me cannot be shared with them.

I am asked questions about how I feel, energy levels on a scale of 1 to 10, my mood, how work is going ? I pat the answers back.

I do not ask any questions because I know that they do not have any answers.

I do have questions though but they must remain unanswered. Time will tell, I am sure

I was asked how the bag was going. Well, if you allow for the fact that one's self esteem is on the floor. Virginia Ironside who is apparently an agony aunt, wrote in the Daily Mail about her colostomy. She was much praised for her frankness. Although with her ability to bathe unbagged and the fact that her reversal is due soon and that she has the greater part of both small and large bowel, she and I did not have the same need for a colostomy. I wrote a comment on the Daily Mail internet website and was interested to note that we were writing down the left hand side of the page about colostomies and down the right hand side were banners which one could click on of the beautiful people and what they had been up to recently. There wasn't the sniff of a colostomy there.

The beautiful people on the right and on the left, the un-beautiful.

Will colostomy ever be a subject for open discussion or will it remain in the closet ?

The subject of lavatory paper was always considered infra dig and now Andrex advertise openly. Immodium is all over the telly, so you don’t have to be all over the loo, presumably. Products to prevent fluid retention and unseemly leaks from female persons are thrust in our face, so perhaps colostomy will be next. Ostomates of the world unite.

Duncan