The sport of racing cars is often times a long, monotonous, boring sport to those watching it on television. But until you are able to get up close and personal to the action in person, you’ll always think of it as boring.

I love sports, but I also love action. Watching cars turn left all day on television just wasn’t appealing to me. I needed to see points being put up on the board. I needed to see people moving, running, jumping, cutting, catching, throwing, and all the other things that sport entails. It wasn’t until I went to my first nascar race that I had a whole new perspective on the sport of racing cars.

When you see what it looks like for a car to be going 200 mph and yet the driver is in complete control of the cars every move, you begin to appreciate the sport for what it is: absolutely awesome. The more I began following the sport, the more I began asking questions about it. Like why are some cars better than others? Don’t they have the same rules and regulations they have to abide by? What makes one more special than the other? Does it really have that much to do with the driver? Does the driver matter that much? And what about when the driver needs to use the restroom, what do they do then? They’re driving over 500 miles, how could they hold it that long?

Then I found out the truth, drivers don’t hold it, they pee right down the legs of their suits. They’re literally sitting in their pee. But because they’re in a fire suit and because they race in extremely hot temperatures as it is, they probably don’t even notice it. But there was one driver that didn’t need to pee down his suit. He had an ostomy care procedure done and had his urine re-routed out of his abdomen. The supplies that were provided to him made it possible for him to go a full 500 miles while he passed his urine into the bag to his side.

Although he didn’t need these ostomy supplies for the long haul, he always said that he raced better when there wasn’t urine filling his pant legs. So, it’s not always a bad thing to have to have an ostomy care procedure done. Especially if you race cars for a living.

I get asked a whole lot of questions due to my career each day. But having someone ask me if I had an ostomy bag or a pistol on my hip is a question I have never received in my life.  Why do I even mention it then?  Well, the truth is that I always have both of these items on me and no one has ever asked me about them.  Is that because I am a criminal?  Not at all. I am a law-abiding citizen whose job revolves around enforcing the law.  But this means that I am allowed to concealed carry and later in life, I was in need of a surgery that was going to leave me with a stoma.  It was a good thing overall and going to help my life, but it also meant that I was going to be carrying an ostomy bag with me.  This was something that I was already accustomed to because of my daily routine of concealing a weapon each day.  Now surprisingly a vast majority of people in my state do and it has become a fashion trend.  The truth is, we have gotten so good at it that most people wouldn’t know even if they were looking for my concealed carry.  This makes me so happy because it gave me a heads up on how to conceal my ostomy bag as well.

Now the journey of figuring all of this out was not really that exciting.  I was mostly annoyed and close to depressed at times that I was going to have to change my fashion in order to work with this new item attached to me at all times.  The truth is that it was not nearly as bad as I had imagined and now I don’t even notice that I have a bag on me.  That is the same way I felt about my concealed carry as well and now they both simply blend in.  My first thoughts when I went to start eliminating the print of my bag was to go big and baggy on my clothing. This was not going to be a good answer for everything in my life and I knew that it would only really fly in winter or at home. 

So my next task was to learn how to keep it from being a known thing.  I am not ashamed of having a stoma. In fact, I am proud that I am safe and secure because of it! I am allowed to live a good and safe life with it.  But I don’t want to answer questions every day based on my stoma because that is just annoying after a while.  So I decided to look at ways to carry my bag concealed.  I thought of the belly band holster that was used to much for concealed carry and thought that it would be perfect for my ostomy bag.  I then found that many companies made items just like it and I bet the ostomy gear world invented it first! 

This was a big boost to my morale and then I started to shop for clothes that were more vertically printed and I was able to not print my bag at all.  This was my journey and how I started out.  I hope it helps you on yours as well.