Time flies when you’re having fun travelling with a stoma!

How did we get to be half way through 2018 already?! The year is flying by! So much has happened (apart from me actually writing many blog posts!) and my ostomy and I have continued our travel adventures around the world, even with some new friends in tow!

I could easily write an entire blog post for each trip, but it could be 2028 before I get around to that, so thought I’d write a little summary of each destination, the highlights, anything ostomy specific I can think of, and of course share a few photos getting my belly out in each place!

New year’s in Paris

We saw in the new year in one of my favourite cities in the world, Paris! Mum and I got our bellies out together outside the Louvre, and we met up with my lovely friend Dorothee who gave us a personal tour of the Palais Garnier and took us to a typical French brasserie where we tried snails (for the first time?!). New year’s eve was a fairly quiet affair in our funky Airbnb eating mountains of cheese and other lovely fresh produce purchased at the local market that morning. Not a highlight but certainly something I will never forget was after a lovely lunch of wine and oysters at Le Baron Rouge, mum deciding to face plant the pavement. One minute she was up the next she was down with blood everywhere and several people rushing to help. It gave us all quite a shock. She was okay thank goodness but had several bruises to see in the new year! Being my fourth time to Paris, we were able to relax and revisit some of our favourite places, including the Musee d’Orsay (where we queued for hours in the pouring rain!), Monet’s waterlilies at L’Orangerie, and a drizzly New Year’s Day cruise along the Seine of course with obligatory bags out shot in front of the Eiffel Tower!

Lovely little Luxembourg

My next little sojourn was a mum and daughter long weekend in Luxembourg. Little Luxembourg really surprised with its lovely fairytale little Unesco listed old town and dramatic cliff top location, beautiful old buildings, the interesting riverside Grund area, and an amazing photography exhibition in the Am Tunnel underneath a bank! Another day we took the train to Vianden with its hilltop castle (in the snow!) and had a Hugo at the Hotel Victor Hugo before visiting Maison Victor Hugo! Luxembourg was never somewhere on my must go list, but with super cheap fares on Ryan Air we thought why not, and I’m glad we did. Mum and I had a ball!!!

NYC!

In March Mikey had a work trip to Toronto and New York. We cheekily asked if I could tag along, and his work said yes! So, my ostomy and I were off on an all-expenses paid 5 nights in New York City!!! First time in the USA with my stoma I was a little nervous about what the security would be like, but it was all smooth pooping!! I did manage to write a detailed blog post about this trip which you can read here.

Easter in España

Our Easter trip to meet mum in Spain started out quite eventful with my first proper bag leak at work on the day we left!!! Luckily, I had all my supplies packed for the trip with me (I generally don’t carry spares or an emergency kit on a normal work day). I managed a quick bag change at work, and then quickly rushed home to replenish my supplies (I was worried I might have packed a bunch of faulty bags), with just enough time to get to Gatwick for our flight! Thankfully that was the only bag drama for the trip, and we enjoyed a lovely 10 days driving from Madrid to Malaga, getting involved in the Santa Semana holy week celebrations for Easter (spine tingling), eating so much yummy tapas, exploring the cobbled streets of Toledo and zip lining over the river, plus many wines and G&Ts on our amazing rooftop patio, walking high above the gorge along the suspended walkways clinging to the rock face of the Caminito del Rey, and having an Easter weekend we won’t forget in the white villages around Ronda.

Looking through my photos, I didn’t realise just how many bag shots I take when I am travelling. In 10 days in Spain, I had almost 20 photos! Oops!!

 

We’ve had a few trips around the UK too, including a lovely weekend with mum and Mikey with a taste of history, the English seaside, glorious country pubs and fisheries galore in Hastings, Rye & Battle.

 

Lake Geneva

For the early May bank holiday weekend, with my mum having just returned to Australia after 4 and a half months in the UK and Europe, I knew I’d need a distraction, so we jetted off to Geneva for the weekend. My stoma and my first trip to Switzerland, and another pleasant surprise! The weather was perfect and we soaked up the sun around Lac Léman with its famous Jet d’Eau, surrounded by the Alps, took a ferry across to the botanical gardens and walked to the United Nations and the big red chair, admired the view from the roof of the Cathedral, hopped across into France to Mt Salève for a picnic, a hike and to watch the paragliders with Mount Blanc in the background, and had a few beers down at the pointe de la jonction where the 2 rivers meet (quite a strange sight!) to finish off a perfect weekend.

Pearl JAmsterdam

Our first trip for the Summer was to Amsterdam, basically to see Pearl Jam, but we squeezed in some other activities too!! Beer, bitterballen and apple pie, walking, cruising and pedal boating the canals, a few “coffee shops”, and up the A’Dam lookout for a bit of a swing!! For opening night of the PJ European tour we got there nice and early to collect our fan club tickets and then queued for 3+ hours outside, and waited another 2+ hours inside, but it was totally worth it being as close to the stage (and Eddie!) as we’ve ever been for a close to 3 hour banging set! A_MA_ZING!! My stoma behaved marvellously, and despite several beers, I managed to only need to empty once in a portaloo while queuing outside, and once inside before they opened the doors to the non fan club members (which meant I could relatively easily make my way back to Michael who was holding fort of our ace possie!). Someone joked I must have been wearing a ten-gallon bag, and ordinarily I would need to empty more regularly especially with the beer and all that jumping around, but my stoma must have known to play nice, and fortunately for me, it did!

Family Time in Italy

I would never in a million years have guessed that the first place I’d see my little sister and niece after leaving Australia would be Sicily, but after a lovely week in Sardinia with my dad, aunt and uncle, we had a mini family reunion in my dad’s home town of Palazzolo Acreide, and I got to see my sis and Jess for the first time since leaving Sydney in October 2016! Sardinia was super relaxing, we ate and drank a lot, had our morning espresso and evening aperitivo and spritz at the same bar every day run by a lovely guy named Francesco (who happened to have 16 chihuahuas!), did a wine tour, dad and I went for a bike ride to the beach, and took a drive to the costa del sud and swam in the crystal clear waters of Cape Malfatano. From Sardinia we flew to Sicily, for a short, sweet and quite surreal 3 nights with my family. Being all together in the town where my dad and auntie were born, not just with my sister and niece but also my cousins and their families, was a truly special experience. Although I wasn’t born there, there is still a very strong pull and emotional attachment. The night we arrived was the end of the Festa di San Paolo and what felt like half of the small town congregated in the piazza to watch the procession and fireworks. It almost felt like the fireworks were a big welcome just for us! We spent our short couple of days walking around the town, visiting some of the relatives, eating pasties just like my nonna used to make, and enjoying special family time. It went by way too quick, and just like that it was time for us to fly back to London and my sister and niece to fly back to Australia. It was so good to see them, and my dad. I love living in London, but like I’ve said before, I do miss my family A LOT!

Meet Vern

I was so preoccupied in Italy that I completely forgot to take any bag shots, but I did have a new friend Vern along for the adventure! Vern is one of 200 ducks that the ostomy company Eakin have set off for the Summer to raise awareness for people around the world living with a stoma. You can read more about it here. It’s a fantastic campaign, and I was super excited to be given Vern to set off on his adventure. I gave him a taste of the ostomy travel lifestyle and we went for a swim in Sardinia together before I took him to Sicily. He wasn’t quite ready to go it alone, so I gave him to my dad, sister and niece to continue his journey. Who knows where he will end up and how many people he will meet along the way to help spread ostomy awareness. I plan to write a separate post all about his adventures at the end of Summer, so watch this space!

Mad Cool

Most recently we were back in Madrid for a 3 day music festival called Mad Cool. It ran from 630pm to 0430am each day so we had to adjust our sleep patterns, getting to bed around 0630, then sleeping until 2pm, getting up, going for a yummy lunch somewhere, then doing it all again!!! Wasn’t sure at my ripe old age how I would go, let alone with the heat, crowds and my stoma, but I’m proud to say, I still got it!! We rocked out every night to some of our favourite bands including Pearl Jam, Kasabian, Alice in Chains, Queens of the Stone Age, Nine Inch Nails, MGMT, Franz Ferdinand, Jack Johnson, Jet, and many more! I was hugely impressed with the organisation and especially the toilet facilities. They weren’t just your typical drop portaloos, but actual proper flush toilets (still in a portaloo cubicle but more like an airplane toilet), with plenty of toilet paper, cleaners, proper hand basins and often not even a queue. When does that happen?! At a festival with 80,000 people of course by the end of the night they were pretty grotty, but overall, it’s one of the better organised festivals I’ve attended. Even though it was over 3 days, there was no camping, and I have to admit I was quite happy going back to our comfy, air-conditioned Airbnb for a shower and sleep. Rather civilised really!!

Health wise everything has been going well so far this year, apart from some minor skin issues directly around the edge of my stoma which I’ve seen a stoma nurse about and have been trying out a few different products. My white blood cell count has also been a bit up and down, and I stopped taking my azathioprine for 2 weeks which brought it back up within normal range again, but something that I obviously have regular blood tests for and will continue to monitor.

I’ve been busy continuing my volunteer work with Crohn’s & Colitis UK East London network, and recently joined the Royal London Hospital IBD patient panel, so lots going on there as well. I helped with an awareness stand at Westfield Stratford, did a toilet recce for the London Walk It! event, and mum and I cheered on the runners at the London marathon. Later this year we have a TFL bucket collection planned during IBD awareness week in December, we’re volunteering at a park run, and hope to organise another quiz night (last years was a great success)!

So that’s 2018 in a nutshell so far! And that’s not to mention all the other exploring just around London as well! What have you been up to this year? Any adventures you’d like to share? Anything that you didn’t think you’d be able to do but surprised yourself? Any new experiences or favourite destinations?! I’m looking forward to the second half of the year and seeing what else it brings! Please feel free to share in the comments 😁

Happy travels,

Laura