As a nuclear power plant operator who has an ostomy bag, life is quite simple. It is funny to say that I live a simple life, yet I operate a nuclear power plant. I was born with a defect, and I do not mind sharing that. It caused me to need a permanent ostomy all my life. I have received some bullying because of it, but I tended to ignore the haters as I knew that I would be making a lot of money. When I was in school, I had a pretty high ego when it came to talking about the future.
When I was born, I was born with a defect. That defect is called an imperforate anus. To explain it simply. I was born without an anus. This caused the doctors to immediately want to operate on me and fix that problem. To fix this, they needed to perform a permanent ostomy procedure. They took my colon out as it was relatively useless to me. They left part of it and brought it to the front of my body to my abdomen wall. A hole was then created where that part of my colon could poke out. This makes what is called a stoma. A stoma is a red, pink color. This allows for any of my bodily waste to exit my body and get dumped into a bag that is worn on my abdomen over the stoma.
In school, I received some bullying once they found out I had an ostomy. I did my best to hide it and not tell many people, but I guess I should not have told anyone. When I did receive bullying, I stood my ground and stood up for myself. I generally like to say to them I was going to make more money than them or that I would empty it on them. This usually shuts them up really quickly. I found it amusing because I would never do that. I was determined to become a nuclear power plant operator and had to work very hard in school. I usually ended the school years with at least a B to A average which I was proud of. Due to my hard work in grade school and high school, i was able to get into a great college and focus entirely on nuclear information and work procedures.
When I graduated college, I had a job already lined up, which was very rewarding as I know a few of my friends looked for employment for a while after they had graduated in different fields. My work is not that intensive. Most of the time, I’m looking at gauges on a board monitoring the power plant’s temperature. It is vital to keep a constant temperature going into the nuclear core otherwise, something wrong will happen like Chernobyl.
I love my job. It is very rewarding regardless of the risks we are taking. Every nuclear power plant does the utmost to ensure nothing like Chernobyl happens. If it were to happen, then the amount of destruction that could unfold would be untold. It is my job to ensure nothing like that will ever happen at our plant. My wife works alongside me in a different section of the plant, and we both love what we do. My situation does not prevent me from doing my job, and I have never encountered a problem I could not overcome.
