Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / Getty
It’s not every day you see ostomy bags mentioned in entertainment news stories from the likes of People and The New York Times, so imagine my surprise last weekend when I saw those outlets and more (including The Daily Beast) pick up a story about Matthew Perry revealing that he lived with a temporary colostomy for nine months. “Oh, wow!” I thought, “A celebrity talking about having an ostomy? Maybe stars really are just like us.”
But my enthusiasm dwindled pretty quickly when I read Perry’s comments about his “hellish” ostomy experience (perhaps only the second-most controversial piece of Perry news this week, after his perplexingly bitter feelings toward Keanu Reeves). And I wasn’t the only one, as his words have spread like fire around the ostomy community, leaving people feeling annoyed at best and offended at worst.
As Perry recounted to People in a piece previewing his upcoming memoir, his colon burst in 2019 from years of opioid abuse. He spent two weeks in a coma before waking up and discovering that he’d had emergency ostomy surgery—which involves getting a surgically created opening called a stoma on the abdomen, allowing waste to leave the body—to save his life.