2girls, feeling so exhausted after surgery is completely normal. After my collectomy in April 2011, I stayed home for three weeks, completely fatigued, but just about
able to go for walks to supermarket and back. That was it, I spent those days watching movies at home, reading abit, having friends over who understood what was happening. Then I went to a rehab clinic for 3 weeks, for physio therapy and sports for people who had just had surgery. I was exhausted the whole while there too, although the sport therapy helped greatly. Then several more weeks at home again before I started work on June 1st.
The collectomy is a whopping, massive operation and will take its toll on your energy for a long while. Don't expect much from yourself physically.
Emotionally I had a very hard time. I burst into tears every time I had to look at my stoma. What was worse was that after three weeks I went through the normal stoma shrinkage time, which is when the bags keep leaking out of the seal, maybe even 2-3 times a night and 3 imes during the day. It felt competely chaotic and out of control and I thought I would never be able tohave anthing resembling a normal life. Everthing was ruined. The leakage stopped around the time I went home and from that point I could cope with it all much better. Every new situation was scary, like using a restaurant restroom for the first time and emptying my bag there, my first day at the new job was also extremely tense for me because I was afraid I would leak or that everyone would find out about it. None of the things I was afraid of happened. I did feel limited as to what I could wear, but soon realized that no matter what I wore, no one would "find out" because it doesn't occur to anyone that there is such a thing as a bag.
In fact, the day I got back to work after my reversal in March, a woman at work who I don't particularly like started telling me how she met another woman who told her about her stoma and bag and she was so horrified to hear of such a thing. I had to grin to myself, because we had shared an office my first month, and she was the one person who definitely should not know because of her big gossipy nasty mouth.
After about the third month,however, I noticed that I was having tender feelings for my stoma and was in a relationship with it. I took extra careful care of the skin around it, thought nice thoughts about it and felt grateful that it worked so hard to keep me healthy and could handle all the salad and nuts as I started to enlarge my diet. I had to have three operations, and had the second one in Decmeber where they formed my jpouch and gave me a new loop stoma. It behaved a bit differently but I felt find with it and at that point nothing could phase me, not even when it started squirting all over the bathroom when I changed bags. Then three months later came the refersal. I'm glad the stoma is back inside where it belongs although I am having other issues and have to go to pelvic floor therapy.
It was a very long haul with me keeping most of it to myself and never quite believing that it would indeed come to an end, but I promise it does. Just take it easy with yourself for now and if you start havng leaks when the stoma is changing size, try to deal with it as a practical issue and not an emotional one. Poo going out of control is very threatening to your whole sense of self but it really has nothing to do with who you are, it's just one phase of an illness that no one deserves.
BTW I had my two stomas for 12 months and the whole time ws getting most of my support from this forum.