Folks, can we stop the shit shaming here?

[BlancheSplanchnik]

50. I am a person with an ileostomy. Shit-shaming is actually pretty triggery for me.

That's part of the reason I have C-PTSD (Complex PTSD).

Some diseases aren't "popular" in terms of public awareness, fundraising or sympathy. Some of them are a dirty, disgusting secret.

Being shit-shamed is your life when you grow up with Inflammatory Bowel Disease, and I feared it terribly. Back then there weren't online support groups either. You were alone with your nasty secret.

If struggling to stay alive through massive blood loss 20 times a day, excruciating pain and having no life isn't bad enough, people with chronic illnesses such as Ulcerative Colitis (me), Crohn's disease, and other life-threatening bowel diseases hope we can hide our shitty symptoms from the rest of the world because you've been humiliated so regularly and all you can think of is surviving the next attack/getting to a bathroom in time.

Also, if you're not home, and you suddenly ARE running to find a bathroom because you're about to Lose Your Shit, you pray you won't encounter strangers who will attack you for being disgusting. That happened to me more times than I want to remember.

Because--shit shaming.

BUT----
I had a bag for several years, long ago and I'd have been happy to shove that BAG OF SHIT so far down his throat, it would fall out his ass.

Now I have an internal thingy---and I'd love to walk into the next cabinet closed meeting and whip out my catheter, stick it in the hole in my gut and strafe them ALL. It would melt their goddamn rich, white, sociopathic faces.