One of the things I find in life is to never give up on things that bring you joy. Even when really hard times come I think it is always worth fighting to retain the joys you have even when life tries to take them away. This can go for a whole bunch of areas in life but injuries and surgeries are the places that I have always tried to overcome to enjoy what I love doing. What I really love doing is being outside and backpacking. Backpacking is a part of my life that has always given me some of the greatest times and personal areas of growth in my life. When I heard that an Ostomy was scheduled and I was going into surgery I knew that it would not be the end of my backpacking career. Instead, I was going to find a way to enjoy the great outdoors again and fight through.
What I did first was to get through my surgery and get on the track to recovery. I first made up my mind to get back into it when I got home from the hostpital. I took a few weeks to learn the ropes and get past the learning curve. Then when I understood what ostomy gear worked for me I knew I had to learn how to do the hard stuff and be active with my stoma. Within a few months, I was working on my body to be able to get back up carrying the weight and getting my abs back into shape.
I worked slow and took my time walking, hiking, and going to the gym. It was a long road and was not easy, but I have hurt my ankle so many times that I knew it was going to be some work. So I thrived to learn how to use the right size ostomy bags and the right belts to keep it tight on my body. I found out what gear worked for me and what didn't. Then once my body was strong enough I turned to the actual gear of backpacking. This was the fun part to me because I love gear and finding ways to do things the best with the most interesting pieces of gear.
I learned first off that I needed a lighter backpack. I was going to need to bring more ostomy gear with me and that meant I wanted to offset it with a lighter kit. So I looked into the realm of ultralight backpacks. This also was needed because I didn't want to risk my stoma gear getting caught on my hipbelt. This was a whole difficult task because to get a backpack this light and without a pack, I needed to go ultralight on all of my gear. So that is what I did. I found ultralight backpacking youtube channels and forums online and went to town getting the lightest weight gear in the world.
My backpack now weighs about 1 lb and my sleeping bag which is now a quilt weigh one pound as well. It was amazing to start getting my gear down to super lightweight. My tent weighs three pounds and all in all I can go out and backpack with a 15lb pack. That allows me to be able to do this all without a hipbelt and not to harm my body. To be honest I am better now than I was before my stoma.
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