- • the record-breaking week-long bout with constipation, and then when your bowels do finally give way they come in short and painful nuggets, and when you give them The Last Look Before The Flush, you see they’re drenched in blood?
- • the vomit-inducing cold in your stomach when you find out the results of the examination, of the polyps found in your colon?
- • the immense physical weight lifted from you as the surgeons pull out seventy-five to eighty percent of your entrails, because by then it’d be too late for anything else?
- • the immense emotional weight gained by you as you realise that you will be helpless and dependent for the rest of your life, however long that may be?
- • the guilt of fighting with your frustrated older brother every night, ten minutes after rinsing and disinfecting your colostomy bag, because you fail to successfully remove the stink of your faeces from the bathroom sink?
- • the chill of the bed you share with your wife who wants nothing to do with you anymore, even to touch you just that night, what more for the coming days and weeks and months and years?
- • the realisation that you will never know your son as a man?
- • the realisation that your son will never know you as a man, instead will know someone else?
- • the acceptance that you are already Damaged Goods, and the freedom that it doesn’t bring?
- • the surprise in your eyes as your stomach bloats five-hundred percent its original size (you just never thought it could grow that big)?
- • the regret of letting go?
Do you know or wish to know ...
Do you know or wish to know the pain and/or fear of:
