Purple Wings Catwalk Show

I just finished taking my clothes off again, this time in front of an audience, for Purple Wings' catwalk show, where I modeled some White Rose Collection underwear and swimwear as well as new ostomy clothing company I Am Denim men's jeans. The really great thing for me is that I did not feel particularly anxious about having my bag out in front of so many people, which I think reflects how far I have come in my journey to be more accepting of my new body image. I also got to meet some incredibly attractive women who were fellow models in the show. I definitely recommend anyone with an ostomy in the UK to come to Purple Wings events and meet the fantastic people in the community. 

Purple Wings Charity Calendar Shoot

Today I had the honour of posing for the charity Purple Wings for their 2019 calendar. Purple Wings helps sufferers of IBD with ostomies regain their confidence and anyone who knows my journey (see the next blog post!) knows this is something that I battle with myself. The day was loads of fun and was great to see the charity founder again, as well as meet other British guys with ostomies. I am hoping to be Mr December 2019 and I will post a link when the calendar is available for sale!

Fittleworth

The bags that Coloplast sent didn't arrive in time before I left the kickboxing camp so I got in touch with a few other suppliers and found that Fittleworth has a 'worldwide emergency assistance' program. I don't use Fittleworth at the moment but I'm definitely considering switching to them because it has been so hard to get hold of bags this trip. I've been lucky that my supply has lasted long enough but the emergency service might be essential in future!

Kickboxing part 2

I emailed my contact in the Product Specialist team at Coloplast in the UK who was helping me to try out some new bags while I was at home, and I asked her if she had any contact details in Thailand. She promptly emailed back with her Thai colleague's email address and I fired off an email asking where I could get hold of Coloplast bags, but this was about 9pm on a Friday Thai time and I didn't expect to hear anything until Monday at the earliest. By Wednesday I still hadn't heard anything so I retried my UK contact, who very helpfully arranged to have some bags sent from the UK! I was surprised and very grateful of this generous support.

Comfizz on the other hand were not apologetic or helpful at all about their defective product and simply suggested that I purchase another shield. I had a go at patching up my shield with paper clips and medical tape, which has been somewhat effective - see picture below;

Kickboxing with a bag

As part of my quest to make myself a more masculine man and get in tip top shape for the next photoshoot I've headed back to Thailand to do at least 2 weeks of kickboxing and MMA training. I'm now 3 days into the training and, whilst all my muscles hurt, I have a slight headache from being punched in the head and a few minor cuts and scrapes, the most annoying thing is how difficult it is to get the bags to stay on properly when doing the training. What with the heat and sweating profusely from the training, the bag seems to be coming off after every session. This is causing my some anxiety because I only brought enough bags for using 1 every day, and I might well run out at this rate.

Another annoyance is the comfishield I bought from Comfizz. For those of you who haven't used Comfizz's stoma protection range, there are now two options, the level 3 hernia belt which comes with a stoma guard and as the name suggests also provides support for protection against hernias and their new comfishield which is basically just the stoma guard with a softer base and no hernia protection. You can see from this picture that the stoma guard with the comfishield has holes in whereas the ones that comes with the hernia belt does not. Unfortunately I brought the punctured shield with me and in the very first MMA training, when someone fell on top of me, it cracked right down the middle. I think this is because of the holes.

Jasmine Stacey Collection

My friend Jasmine, who I met when I modelled for the White Rose Collection ostomy underwear photoshoot, produces her own line of super sexy lingerie for ostomates under the brand Jasmine Stacey Collection and has just launched a crowdfunder campaign in order to help her to expand her lingerie line. More relevant to me, this will also allow her to design some underwear for men. I recently tried some underwear from Vanilla Blush, which was fine but nothing special, so I have high hopes that Jasmine can bring to men's ostomy underwear the same combo of sexy allure and functionality that defines her lingerie line.

Colifoam

Every now and then I get some inflammation in the 3 cms of rectum that I have left, I used to keep it under control with azacol suppositories but a few years back I found that hydrocortisone rectal foam called Colifoam worked much better and I only had to use it once a year or so. Unfortunately while I was in India this inflammation started up and I started bleeding from my bum, I went to the small pharmacy in Dharamsala but of course they didn't have any and directed me to the hospital. It's only a small amount of bleeding so I decided it wasn't worth it and that I would wait until I got back to the UK in about 3 weeks time. I got my old GP to send a prescription to my old pharmacy in Canary Wharf and headed over there on the way to crash at my friend's apartment, who kindly put me up for a few days when I got back. Unfortunately the pharmacy had messed up and lost my prescription and later told me they couldn't even get hold of Colifoam, despite being the largest pharmacy chain in the UK. I vaguely remember that someone told me in the past that they had stopped making it. I was a bit concerned as I was only in London for the weekend and wouldn't be able to go back to my GP to get a different prescription for something similar. When I got back to my parents' place on the Monday I tried to get an emergency GP appointment but it turns out that they are even more unhelpful these days than they used to be. They just told me either that they didn't have any appointments or that I would have to come in and fill in some forms before being able to wait for an appointment. Luckily I then phoned around some pharmacies and managed to find one that had some supplies left. Turns out they had loads in stock because they bulk bought it, so I know where to go in a years time.