Last month, Amber Wallace Ogle of Ostomy Diaries & I got together with Hollister, Inc. (a major ostomy manufacturer) to bring our audiences a discussion on how to lead a fuller life with an ostomy. Our aim was to engage viewers from around the world who may be struggling with self-image, body image, family life and relationships with an ostomy. And it was a grand success! We reached nearly 1,500 viewers from over 46 countries and from the feedback received, it was a video that helped many. Here’s to many more conversations like this where we can help ostomates feel less like outcasts and more like the beautiful human beings…
- acceptance, advocacy, awareness, Body Positivity, Colorectal Surgery, Crohn's, Dating & Relationships, Gratitude, living with IBD, Ostomy, Ostomy Awareness Day, Self-image, stigma, Ulcerative Colitis
- acceptance, awareness, Body Positivity, Colorectal Surgery, coping with flares, Crohn's, Dating & Relationships, Egg-Freezing, J-Pouch, living with IBD, Ostomy, Pregnancy in IBD, Ulcerative Colitis, Women's Health
~OYC TRAILBLAZERS~ Katie’s Story: Baby-Making Prospects & Egg-Freezing with a J-Pouch
A Nursing Student Tells OYC Her J-Pouch Story and How That Led to Her Courageous Decision to Freeze Her Eggs to Someday Have Children. By Katie Gene Friedman When I was first diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in my senior year of college, my colitis responded to medication and didn’t take up much of my life. Consequently, I only disclosed my diagnosis to my then boyfriend, best friend, and immediate family. During a bad flare and particularly stressful semester in grad school studying social psychology, that group expanded to include the nucleus of my social circle and some professors. At that point, my disease affected what I was doing but not…
- Ableism, acceptance, advocacy, awareness, caregivers, Colorectal Surgery, Crohn's, Dating & Relationships, Disability Justice, Fistulizing Disease, living with IBD, Ostomy, stigma, Ulcerative Colitis, Women's Health
Love Knows No Disability
Nine years ago today, the love of my life, Anand, and I were married in a beautiful Hindu temple with several of our relatives and friends in attendance from all over the world. It was a momentous occasion for me not just in a traditional sense but because of how close I had been to death just two years prior. But as beautiful as the wedding was, the process of getting married wasn’t exactly a fairytale or a bed of roses. You see, a couple years prior, I was freed of an extremely warped and diseased colon on the 4th of July, 2008 (see blog post: My Very Own Independence…