The Girls Club

I came across something pretty special before the holidays - almost like an early Christmas gift. It's the first chapter of a book called "The Girls Club". I found it on a website authored by a woman named Sally Bellerose, who sounds like a pretty groovy lady. How I found the site, I'm not sure, but I am sure glad that I did.

The story is about a ninth grade girl named Cora Rose who is suffering from colitis. It is a first person account of the ugly social aspects of the disease. In particular, the chapter vividly describes an incident in which Cora Rose is discovered in the girls' washroom after she's had an "incident".

I found it to be a very poignant and honest account about how devastating this disease can be on a young girl during a sensitive time in her life - schoolyard cruelty is bad enough without adding to it the inherently embarrassing nature of ulcerative colitis - the cramping, the frequent trips to the bathroom, the bloody diarrhea. God forbid that you have an accident in front of other people because you couldn't make it to the toilet in time. And Sally Bellerose writes it in such a way that I could just feel the character's shame jumping right off the page.

I emailed Sally about her story and she had this to say (she tried to post it to this blog, but it didn't work for whatever reason):

Hey Stella, Hang in there. I'm 27 years total colonectomy post-op and I promise it gets better and better. I am a very healthy middle-aged woman and have been so for the last 27 years. I tell you this because post surgery it was important to me to meet people who had been through what I had and were leading 'normal' lives. Reading your blog has brought it all back to me. I was one of the original patients to get the so called Parks Procedure, ilio-anal-anastomosis,in the US. We can thank the British for developing the technique. I too, am prone to migraine - common with colitis. Imitrix is a miracle drug for me. In the early post-op days I belonged to a support group which I initiailly found helpful. I remember the exhaustion even now, but a couple? (few - several) months after surgery I went back to work as Nurse Manager for a very busy unit and never in 20 years missed a day of work due to (lack of colon) colon problems. Thanks for startin g this blog and getting in touch with me through my website. I send you healing thoughts. For what it's worth I'm most happy to share any aspect of my experience that I can remember. Believe it or not you forget some of it. All best, Sally Bellerose

So check out her website - the second chapter of "The Girls Club" has won the Rick Demarinis Short Story Award. I am very much looking forward to reading the rest of Cora Rose's story.

An End in Sight!

I went in to see my surgeon today for a post-operative follow-up. Good guy, my surgeon. Luckily, he's an excellent doctor as well. He seemed quite pleased with my recovery so far (it has been almost 7 weeks since the surgery) and so the discussion turned to scheduling my third, and what I hope is my last, surgery.

And the award for Best Date for Surgical Reconnection is... February 21, 2007!

Yes, I spent 3 1/2 hours watching the Golden Globe Awards tonight. A funny thing about that - during the first night after I came out of my first surgery last March, I seemed to be a little obsessed with Hollywood awards shows. I'm not sure why, but sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up with what I thought was a major revelation. In fact, I was convinced that I had uncovered a grand consipiracy about the Golden Globe Awards. "It's a fix," I thought in the midst of a morphine-induced haze, "the Hollywood Foreign Press decides who wins the awards! It was so obvious! Why else would the actors all thank the Foreign Press in their acceptance speeches? I must tell someone!!!" I wanted to wake up my husband, who was sleeping in a chair beside my bed, to share this groundbreaking news, but my mouth was so dry from the anasthetic that I couldn't talk. Plus, I was so drugged that I had trouble actually forming the physical words with my mouth. So as I was fading in and out of consciousness that night, I was trying to force myself to remember to tell someone about this discovery the moment that I was able to string a few words together - it was my responsibility to expose the great power of the Hollywood Foreign Press!

When I finally got my head together, I realized that of course there was no grand conspiracy - it was common knowledge that the Golden Globes are awarded by the Foreign Press. But I clearly remember my horror that night, when I thought that Hollywood was nothing more than an elaborate celebrity factory created by an elite group of people who were only interested in separating the masses from their money.

Still, makes for a good story.