These past years have been rough on basically everyone. No one has enjoyed dealing with the effects of the COVID19 virus, especially those people that have unfortunately passed away from the disease. However, it also has not been a cake walk for people like myself who have an ostomy, Believe it or not, people with ostomies like myself are considered very high-risk patients in the face of COVID19, so you can imagine my stress levels when it comes to maintaing distance from people and staying at home in doors where it is safe. You can also imagine my frustration when it comes to people not respecting social distancing guidelines and refusing to get vaccinated. I am really upset about people not caring about people like me who have ostomies; we are people too and we are in danger! Anyways, this year has been especially rough on me for those reasons. Granted, having an ostomy is not all bad, but it is definitely not fun to be in that high risk category. In the earlier months of 2020 when COVID really began to be an issue in our country, I immediately told my employer that I would need to be working at home because I did not want to be in the office anymore for my own health and safety.
At first, everyone looked at me like I was crazy. It is weird to look back and see how people viewed remote work before COVID. I told my boss that, since I have an ostomy and have to wear an ostomy pouch, I am considered more at risk to COVID since my body is not as strong as others to be able to fight it off. My boss eventually understood, especially as the virus started to spread even more across the nation. Well, I hunkered down in my house for that long summer and pretty much did not leave the house for any reason. You may be asking yourself: how the heck did you get your ostomy supplies while you were locked inside your house?
I must admit that this was a huge concern of mine, but one that I did some research into. Normally, I order all my ostomy supplies through my local hospital because they are covered by my insurance and they have a pretty good selection of ostomy products for me to use. However, during the pandemic that hospital pretty much dropped every other thing they were doing in order to accommodate the massive amount of people that were going to the hospital because of COVID. With that being said, I knew that I had to find an alternate method of getting the ostomy supplies I needed without leaving the house.
Luckily, I knew that I could turn to my good friend the internet. The internet is great for buying ostomy supplies because you can find just about anything you would ever need on there. It really does not matter that type of ostomy product or the brand you are looking for: you will definitely be able to find it online at some website. So I mainly used various medical suppliers online to order the products that I needed online and then had them be shipped to my front porch! It is not easy to be an ostomate, but ordering online sure is easy!
