COMMISERATION WANTED!

As many of you know, in 2006 Jerry had an “ostomy.” We belong to a support group of people (who are referred to as “Ostomates”) with colostomies, ileostomies or urostomies that meets monthly. What most of you don’t know is that ostomy supplies are very expensive, and lucky is the person who has either Medicare or private insurance to help defray the cost. There are many companies that make ostomy products and the choice of what to use depends entirely on what works best with your own skin, with your own type of ostomy and what you find the easiest and best to use and look at! Caring for an ostomy, not to mention living with one, can be fraught with day to day nearly unanswerable questions of “how come?” or “why?” or “what do I do now?” This is why the support group is so invaluable, because there almost always are others who have walked that road before and can give us some guidance. Theoretically there are trained ostomy nurses that one can contact, but in actuality they are few and far between, are limited by restrictions placed on them by insurance companies, and their ranks are thinning.

For people who have Medicare or other insurance plans, the quantities they must order at any one time are dictated by their plan. For Medicare, it is a three-month supply of equipment. Most everyone knows that people with ostomies require a collection bag or pouch that is worn on the outside of the body in the abdominal area and that is secured to the body by an temporary adhesive “plate.” This equipment can either be in a single unit or a two-piece unit that seals together with a Tupperware-like seal. What I have found amazing is that for the most part the adhesive really does stick well to the body, and trying to peel it off when it is time to change the pouch can be a real tough job. However, what happens sometimes is that the body develops an allergic reaction to the adhesive and it becomes necessary to switch to a product from a different company until something is found that the body will accept. Not doing so may mean the pouch simply falls off the body or the irritation begins breaking down the skin.

Products that have suddenly become unusable by an ostomate are often donated to our support group, and of course there is also an occasional donation of items because of a death. By keeping a supply of unused, donated products on hand, our support group can step in and help people who must use a pouch but do not have any insurance to help defray the cost, which is really, really expensive. Our support-group’s secretary has been keeping these supplies in her house, but it was hard for her to keep track of just exactly what we had on hand, as she also maintains a business out of her home. Jerry offered to inventory the supplies and make a computerized list of what we have. Once put on her computer, she could keep the list current and will know at a glance what we have available to provide, if needed. Jerry made it clear to her that he would have to do this at her house, as we did not have room in our apartment for the supplies.

However, at last Sunday’s meeting the secretary brought four tubs full of supplies for Jerry to bring home to inventory. Apparently she just forgot the plan. He and I were both shocked but there was no sense in having her drag them all back home again, so we just rolled our eyes at each other and piled the boxes in the car. Once home, the option was to put them in the middle of the living room floor, or put them in my office.

All this is a preamble to what I intended to say in today’s blog. My office might as well have a sign on it that says “STORAGE FACILITY.” Sitting around the perimeter of this small room are our gardening tools, a chest of drawers which contains all of our linens, two legal size file cabinets, two bookcases that take up 5’ of space, a round table that holds the phone and a lamp, a 30” small bookcase, a large foldable pet cage, and a vacuum cleaner. My clothes closet is behind the file cabinets! Within the space in the center is my L-shaped desk, computer, printer, scanner, a case of 10 reams of paper, a cat carrier, several archive boxes containing files that won’t fit into the metal file cabinets, a small cart laden with tape transcriber, a borrowed scanner, a few empty boxes that I need to save for whatever one needs a box for, my craft holder, and two 24-can Coke cases. Added to that now are all the ostomy supply boxes that Jerry and I will inventory – he at the boxes and me at the computer.

Why do I tell you all this? I want you to commiserate with me for having such a distressing office. I have been working so hard to clear things out, to get things in our little apartment to a workable quantity. And it seems the harder I work, the more comes. The picture below is of the ostomy supplies and the corner into which they have been shoved. My whole room looks like this now. There is a teeny tiny possibility that we can accomplish the inventory before Sunday. If we don’t, it will have to wait until June 1 to be tackled. I think I may have mentioned before that Jerry’s most valued contribution to my modus operandi has been to help me stop fussing and just methodically get things done. It will be done when it is done, he says. And he is right. After almost 34 years of married life, I still need to remind myself of this daily, because at heart I am a fusser. So I know this too shall pass. But I still like to have people commiserate with me!