Being Me

ARM

When I was born, the first Big Problem showed itself. I had no anus. I had a butt, but no anus. My colon ended somewhere in my body. I was one of the 40 baby's in my country that were born with this disease, called ARM. (AnoRectal Malformation) Anusatresia at that time. Because I was very tiny and I had ARM, it wasn't sure if I would make it. I was in High Care, one level below Intensive Care. To explain High Care to you: there was a baby who was always crying. Non stop. Every second of the day, everyday, it was crying. When my mom asked about the baby, the nurses told her the mother had used drugs during pregnancy. The baby was getting of the drugs, essentially. That is the level of problems on High Care. The doctors first thought I had to have a stoma first, and afterwards I would get operated and get an actual anus. Maybe. It didn't go like that. I was the fifth baby that got this operation: I skipped the stoma part, and was operated to get an anus at three months. My parents had to put knitting needles in my anus to widen it. They hated it, I hated it. When it was wide enough, we used clismas to get the poo out. That existed of a little bottle, with a long neck. The neck was put inside my anus, and then the very strong laxative was inserted. When the laxative started working, the poo raced out of me. The whole bathroom was covered then. At a certain point, my mother went to the doctor and said: "This can't go on this way." The doctor showed her another way. It existed of a bag, in which you put water. The water went through a tube, where it ended in a conus and went into my colon. This way was much better. The doctors were afraid I'd hate it, but it was so much better than the clismas. I flushed my colon every day. There was still a problem. I couldn't control my anus. Normally, you can close it if you want to. I couldn't. Still can't. So there were days when I got an accident at school. Very embarrassing of course. But it could have been much, much worse. You didn't see anything about my disease on the outside. My teachers knew, my best friend knows. But other than that, not many knew. After about 10 years of flushing daily, I was wondering if I could flush less. We asked the doctor, and she said we could try to flush less. Now, I still have accidents at times, but I only flush once in four days.