A couple months ago I admitted that I had only recently faced my fear of going in the water with my ostomy. In that post I mentioned that I intended to go wake surfing later in the summer, and I’m here to tell you that wake-surfing is exactly what I did!
It was AWESOME! It’s basically surfing in the wake of a motor boat. If you’re a practiced wake surfer, you don’t even have to hold on to the rope, you just literally surf in the wake the boat is creating. If not you’re not practiced, like me, you hold onto the rope and it’s kind of like wake boarding but you’re feet are not strapped onto the board.
I was nervous so I opted to go first. After pausing for the camera, I jumped in the water. It was pretty chilly and I hadn’t actually swam in three years (thank goodness for life vests). My friend talked me through what I needed to do. Hold the board, get your feet on the board, let the boat pull you up, if you fall let go of the rope and swim toward the boat. It sounded easy enough in theory, but getting my feet on the board was hard! Once I was situated, the boat started moving forward and with hardly any effort I was up! And then I was down. I think I only stayed up for about 10 seconds, maybe less. On the second try, my dad took video and I stayed up a bit longer. I got up and fell on repeat, staying up longer each time until I got to the point where I was able to stay up with ease and only really fell when I started to pretend I knew how to do tricks. It doesn’t seem like it would take that much effort since the boat is pulling you, but I was pretty sore for a few days after!
How did it affect my ostomy? It didn’t!
My pouch stayed on just fine despite being in and out of the water for decent stretches of time. I wore my Nu-Hope hernia prevention belt like I usually do when I do any sort of exercise, but that was the extent to which I took my ostomy into consideration. All in all, I’m so glad I went for it and didn’t let fear hold me back. Now I have something really fun to look forward to next summer.
