IF YOU ARE AN EARLY RISER, like me, you are keeping company with other well-known morning persons like Ben Franklin and Henry David Thoreau. “Cultivate the habit of early rising,” suggested Thoreau. “It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.” This is especially true for people with an ostomy, since we have a natural need to allow gravity to work its magic on our CFD (constant frontal discharge). But early mornings are special all by themselves, the quiet solitude before the eruption of a busy day, the opportunity to gather one’s thoughts over a warm beverage while everyone else remains asleep in bed. Or, for me, the dark silence of walking through the neighborhood unseen to let my muscles unwind just a little, and my mind unwind some as well. I have the pleasure of seeing here and there a scurrying possum, a raccoon, even a fox once or twice a year. Yesterday morning, it was an owl half the size of a Mini Cooper, or so it seemed, perched on a fence, whose head swiveled imperceptibly as he watched me walk past. I wondered what he was thinking. [Poor wingless humans gotta walk everywhere.] [If God wanted us to walk, he wouldn’t have given us wings.] [I used to think they were smart creatures.]
Plenty of night owls out there, Henry. It's difficult for some of us ostomates to hit the road at the crack of dawn, while a few males among us might have received a message saying: "Hit the Road Jack and Don't You Come Back No More." Perhaps not as forcefully. Your daily sleep-awake cycle is mostly genetic. The problem arises when your job does not align with your circadian rhythm. Some lucky ones can adjust their work schedule to suit their biological rhythms. A night owl: "As humans, we always seem to say if someone's different from us, they're therefore wrong. I think people should look at circadian rhythm differences the same way they look at any other differences between people. So don't come at us with your judgments—especially not before noon."
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Yes, early mornings are special all by themselves. They were especially special when the kids were young (and still sleeping). LOL
I do love how it feels like the busy world has stopped just for a bit.
For more tips and resources, check out our Ostomy Learning Center.
You should try staying up all night; you get to watch the world slow down, come to a near standstill compared to daytime hours, and then wake up and get moving again.
How to Manage Ostomy Leaks with LeeAnne Hayden | Hollister
