I guess we all do that “body image” thing from a fairly early age. How can I be more like my hero? I suppose it starts in school where there’s always somebody who has something that you wish you had.
And who is your hero today? Some kid in your class, a kid in the year above you, a pop star, a film star, a footballer, any other sportsperson; heaven help us maybe even a politician?
And your aspiration or envy could be for something as simple as a toy, an item of clothing, or just the quiff of a hairstyle. Taller, slimmer, fatter, shorter, stronger, weaker, leaner, muscular. Paler, darker. My hair more blonde, black, brunette, redhead, ginger, and curlier, straighter, longer, shorter.
So here I am, an old man with a stoma and slightly overweight. And not slightly overweight in the “body image” sense, but slightly overweight in the “medical healthiness” sense. And old in the “being in my late sixties” sense rather than old in the “parts wearing out” sense, although the two may be slightly connected! And “with a stoma” in the permanent sense, as in the “had my anus removed so no alternative” sense.
Having massive surgery in your sixties means you are perhaps more aware of how your body is changed by the surgery. You’d had plenty of time to get used to how it was. So I think you do become conscious of body image under the circumstances. But then I kind of realise that I didn’t do badly out of my old body image, it saw me through to the point where I’m almost certainly much closer to the end than the beginning.
And realistically life’s actively “best times” that seemed completely dependent on body image have passed. Or perhaps those active “best times” were dependent instead on what I hoped would be someone else’s perception of my body image?
Actually the most important part of your body image as you get older isn’t what you can do with your body, it’s what you can do with the bit between your ears. And I think as a youngster I wouldn’t have realised that, couldn’t have realised that, although even as a child, teenager, or young adult what goes on between your ears defines the most attractive or repulsive parts of you.
Of course I had a head start in the body image game. I was lucky enough to be badly scarred from a very early age. I was scalded when I was a pre-toddler, my first steps were very nearly my last as I reached out for balance and pulled a boiling pot of tea over myself. Skin grafts and six weeks in hospital followed. So I have never known a flawless skin, because it happened before I remember anything. And oddly enough I don’t really remember even being aware of it at all until I was about six or seven.
That’s when you ask your parents “what’s this all about then?” Happily it hasn’t put me off tea, I can drink it in copious amounts. But when you’re in a gym/PE vest at school and they ask you about it, “I pulled a pot of tea over myself when I was a baby” seems a bit lame somehow. So I began to make up outrageous stories about how I’d ended up scarred. Fighting with lions or alligators was an early one. Rescuing someone from a burning building was a favourite; unless it was an attractive girl who had asked, in which case I was rescuing someone’s pet cat from a burning building. Eventually I had been a racing driver and had crashed and the car burst into flames, and I couldn’t face racing any more.
Then I remember being in a football changing room, and spotting a large mark on a team-mate’s left shoulder blade. A familiar-looking wound. We compared notes. Mine was on my left shoulder too, but more down and across the bicep as well as under the left side of my chin, with a few ancillary splash marks on forearm, chest, and forehead. His graft was shoulder blade only. What was fascinating was that as babies we’d both had grafts of skin taken from the top of the inner left thigh.
Now in babies the top of the inner thigh tends to be a smooth and delicate thing, but in an adult male it is often a rough and hairy thing; a short and curly hairy thing. He and I are still the only two people I’ve ever known of with pubic hair on their shoulders.
Because it had always been there, it never bothered me. The only time I really noticed it was when I had a fairly physical job that required a lot of lifting, and as my arms grew stronger the grafted skin tightened across the muscles. But the muscles only grew so much, and the skin stretched over time, so it wasn’t a problem. Even the bit under my chin turned out not to be the problem I thought it might have been. Once I started to shave, I’d always used an electric razor, terrified of the bloodbath a wet shave might bring. But actually, wet turned out to be just as easy as dry, and somehow more comforting.
Anyway, apart from a few square inches of (most of the time covered up) skin, the rest of my body has always seemed to be reasonably fit and athletic. I would describe myself as generally just above average physically, intellectually, and pretty well everything else-ally. I used to be just above average height, but not compared to today’s youngsters.
My body image might be intertwined with my philosophy on life, or vice versa. I’ve always been able to put bad things behind me. Once something unwelcome or unfortunate has happened, you can’t make it un-happen. Because the image that my body shell projects has always been one of being “slightly damaged goods”, I’ve had to just get on with it. So I’ve gone through life with an attitude towards happenings of “repair it, if possible; remember it, and what caused it; and carry on, always carry on (but not carry on regardless!)”. You can’t un-happen it.
So when cancer comes along… well, you don’t want to hear it. You don’t really want any bad news at all thank you very much. But it’s there, I can’t magic it away: deal with it. It is prostate cancer, you had the symptoms, you should have come here a year ago. Well, I didn’t, so now how do we deal with it? This is the treatment plan, follow it. OK.
Medically induced changes to my body again: superficially cosmetic in that I acquire three tiny tattoos for radiotherapeutics’ triangulation; internal changes in that my prostate gets blasted by thirty-seven concentrated and focused blasts of radiation. And hormone treatment makes me menopausal and I’m sweating profusely, which does wonders for my body image, not. Except I rationalise it, and can’t really un-happen the treatment plan, so work with it instead.
Then I have a leaky bum, and it turns out not to be piles, but instead is a mucus leak caused by a cancerous growth at the exit point. I have a tumour, and it has grown to be four centimetres long and buried itself into the wall of my back passage. Once again, I can’t un-happen it.
We’ll have to remove your anus. Well, I knew Pluto wasn’t a planet anymore, but Uranus too? Oh, OK, it’s not a joking matter. It was pretty clear that the operation was a matter of life or death. We can delay it a few weeks, but not months.
A stoma? Sorry, a what?
Once again, I just have to accept that it’s happened. Perversely enough I think it helped that there was a lot of death in my family at the time. It took my mind off my own potential misery. The reason the operation was delayed was two funerals I had to attend, the second of which I had to arrange. With one of them dying with a very late secondary cancer diagnosis and the other from a massive stroke, I was actually well motivated for the surgery, looking forward to it in fact.
When I first became aware of Zeppy the Zeppelin, he seemed completely unexceptional. They’d told me he would be there, and he was there, so that was fine then. I did my first couple of bag changes in the hospital, under supervision. It was quite easy, and of course the nurse didn’t see anything odd or unusual about me pooing out of my belly, so why should I think it unusual or odd? Why should anyone think it was odd?
It was great that I found that my friends rallied round. I was exhausted by the visits they made after I had got home. There was one afternoon when three of them turned up independently and stayed for over an hour and a half.
My first tentative game of golf, a very gentle stroll around a nine-hole pitch and putt, and I was so conscious of the bump of my bag showing, but I was told it wasn’t noticeable. With a support belt on, it is only really me that notices it under my clothing.
Gradually getting myself back to fitness and finally playing walking football again, I ended up getting changed in the changing room with the rest of the team. Rather like in the film “Crocodile Dundee” where he says “that’s not a knife, this is a knife!” I was bragging that “that’s not a scar, this is a scar!” And all the time my bag was flapping about in front of me as I showed off my Ken Butt.
I have no control over what Zeppy does, and as with everything else, if he’s happened to do something, I can’t un-happen whatever it was he did. So if it can’t be un-happened, I have to get on and deal with it, and so do any people around me. I try to find humour in it. As I’ve been sitting writing this he’s been intermittently blowing into the bag, living up to his name of Zeppy the Zeppelin.
My preferred footballing position is as a defender, and one of the footballers that I play against quite regularly in training sessions likes to back into opposing defenders. I tell him he’d best not back into me against my bag… So yes, some of the humour is actually quite gross, but it is what it is.
Physically I seem to be doing well, my footballing stamina has certainly improved recently, and my golf game is almost back to pre-operation levels. My partner of thirty-seven years says she still fancies me. She’s only ever known me with scars, what’s a few more?
So after all this, it turns out I’m still me. Just a bit more battered around the edges, a bit older, probably no wiser. If I were to think of myself as an antique vase, my value at auction has probably gone down because of a few more chips and cracks, and the paintwork has faded a bit, but I am still more or less watertight. Yep, it does for me: I am what I am.
Stewart's Blog 