ostomy leaks – The big stoma bucket list (2024)

14Jan2014

Posted in Uncategorizedby thestomabaglady

So today is January 14 and I’m shocked to announce that I haven’t cracked yet on my “dry January” new year’s resolution.

As you all know my dry January is not like the norm. Instead of alcohol I’ve attempted to give up sweets and fizzy pop. It’s not a secret that I’m very unfortunately addicted to diet coke, dr pepper and well, copious amounts of gummy and sour sweets. I’m a sweet addict, struggling through the day to keep up my energy without a much-needed sugar rush. But, I haven’t always been this way, as a child I was brought up on a strictly no sweets, fizz diet – my lunch box was packed full with sliced apples, boxes of raisins, bananas and little pots of nuts and yogurt. I never had fizzy drinks, in fact I don’t even think I heard the sound of a ring pull being opened until I reached high school and saw my first vending machine.

I fell in love with fizzy drinks when I was at university. I remember the first time I had too much full fat coca cola I couldn’t sleep. I was about 14 years old and drank litres of the stuff with some mates during a movie night, I remember shaking from the caffeine and waking up the next day with a dry mouth and a banging headache – a feeling I would later realise was the same as having a red bull and vodka induced hangover. I didn’t drink it again properly in years, but when I started university the lure of the cold fizzy drinks from the vending machine always cried out over bottles of water, which shockingly enough were always the same price.

Don’t get me wrong, when I want to I can always give up fizzy drinks. Whenever I’m in hospital I always give them up all together. And in the months following my ostomy operation I didn’t touch a drop through fear of my ostomy bag exploding. But once I got back to work the lure of the cans in the fridge had me knocking back the pop. I now drink much less than I used to, and often choose to have cordial rather than fizzy pop – but my love for haribo sweets lives on. I often find I need the sugar rush as a pick me up to get me through the day, otherwise my blood sugars seem to plummet and I’m left feeling dizzy and wanting to fall asleep at my desk.

But today is January 14, which means that since January 1 I have not had a single sip of fizzy pop or a single sweetie. Oh, I have to add that’s despite a heck of a lot of temptation, with my partner fully stocking the fridge with enough cans of Coke Zero to send my addiction to dizzying new heights. I almost swear he is doing it on purpose, he seems to have started drinking an absurd amount of coke since I gave it up – perhaps it is a test.

Typically since giving up the things that are bad for me – I don’t eat many glutenous things due to my lactose intolerance and in ability to cope with spices etc – my health has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Why does this always happen. My diet – apart from the obvious sweetie addiction – is pretty healthy, I devour spinach by the bucket load, love veg and cereal. But every time I give up alcohol, sweets, fizzy pop, in fact anything slightly bad for me I feel dreadful.

This time my skin has broken out in a very painful way. You know those spots that actually hurt. My impetigo in my nose has got worse, and the eye infections have come back, leaving me with bright pink oozy eyelids 247. I’m so fed up with it I’m tempted to down a litre of diet coke and devour a fun-sized tun of haribo just to see if it will magic my skin back to normal.

Obviously my Colitis is getting worse and these symptoms go hand in hand with all that, but I’m feeling shattered, low and fed up. My fistula bag keeps leaking horrific smelling blood and mucus, and my skin around my stoma is going red and ulcerated again. I feel lethargic and tired. And a few horrific leaks from my fistula have seen me covering high-profile cases while being sure I was able to smell the blood leaking over my tights, hoping that the guys from the BBC and the nationals don’t think I’m always this touchy or smelly.

While sat in said case I didn’t have time to change my bags, I just sat there hoping they wouldn’t leak any more. Thankfully, despite soaking my tights, the Salts strips I rely on to contain leaks managed to do their job effectively, and help me to carry on with my job. Albeit worried about standing up covered in blood. It’s moments like that I’m always thankful I never wear white jeans or outfits as a rule.

Anyway me and Andy have taken to going walking every weekend, and despite my sprains and constant pulled muscles stopping me from getting back into the gym, swimming and running again, the walking and hiking appears to be working.

Hopefully soon I will be scaling the Three Peaks and maybe higher than that, who knows.

5Aug2013

Posted in Uncategorizedby thestomabaglady

This morning Winnie (my temperamental stoma) decided she’d had enough of being

My new padding for ileostomy scar lasted the whole of five hours before falling off

covered up and trapped in her bag and decided to make a break for freedom. At the time I was happily soaping up in the shower, desperately trying to avoid the red raw skin which surrounds my ileostomy op scar and mucus fistula bag, but none the less enjoying the refreshing feeling of washing off the night’s grime in a nice warm shower.In my slightly hungover haze (a few glasses of wine at Andy’s neighbour’s)I was blissfully unaware that as the hot water poured down over my ostomy bag the flange (horrid word) was gradually breaking away from my skin.

Suddenly all I felt was this heavy feeling and then the bag starting to peel away from my skin. Water poured onto my stoma, who out of fright of the weight, warmth and speed of the water, started to shrink inwards in the fashion of a startled turtle popping its head back into its shell, while I scrambled to hold onto the ostomy bag which was rapidly filling with water and becoming heavier and more water-logged with every passing second.

It was the most stressful shower I have ever experienced. Ok, that’s if you don’t count the handful of showers (if you can call them that) I was subjected to in the days following my ileostomy operation, where I was dragged to the assisted bathroom by a poor and unsuspecting student nurse before being pretty much physically forced to strip down to my birthday suit, before being popped on a plastic garden chair and hosed down at arm’s length. This would be the first time someone other than my nurse or surgeon saw my ostomy bag. To say I felt humiliated as the rather young and pretty nurse soaped my back and gave me shower gel for my ‘intimate’ parts while she prattled on about reality tv and student housing in an attempt to put both me and her at ease would be a severe understatement…I think the word traumatised is more fitting.

Red raw skin halfway through dressing emergency after leak

I don’t think I will forget the poor shaking nurse who was made to take on this task on her face day on-the-job. As she helped me remove my hospital gown (that I was still in even though it was days after the operation) and revealed my bony skeleton, which was scarred like a drug addict from the amount of nurses and doctors who had taken my exhausted state as an opportunityto use me as a human pin cushion, I saw her face actually freeze into a transfixed look of horror and disgust. I was actually appalled for her, it was like I’d witnessed the moment that she realised she would have to do this to other people (both older, wrinklier, and with various scars and bits of machinery and stomas hanging out of them) for the rest of her life, and she’d just realised that this wasn’t what she’d signed up for. But her fleeting revulsion aside, she handled the situation miraculously well and she managed to do a really good job in the end washing away days of blood, dirt and god knows what else…and surprisinglyshe quickly became my favourite nurse and I like to think I became her favourite patient, as we shared stories of student days and nights out in Chester.

I have to admit that I had a feeling Winnie was going to try to make a bid for freedom today. To date she has had several failed escape attempts, which have been foiled at the last second by myself, who acting like a watchful prison guard has spotted every attempt Winnie has made to scale her prison cell at the very last second almost by chance as my inner warning alarm has triggered and I have checked on my bag just as the adhesive has started to break free. This hasn’t meant that she hasn’t enjoyed a few leaks. In fact over the past couple of days there have been more leaks than I have cared to keep count of. So far I have mostly been lucky and these have happened in the safety of my own home where I have enjoyed the liberty of having my changes and supplies as well as my own clean bathroom to plug the cheeky rascal before things have got out of hand. I like to think that I’m handling it well but to tell you the truth I’m living in constant fear of my first public leak and for that reason I am avoiding white clothing or (I know this is going a bit too far) standing on white carpets for fear of a poo related incident.

Having a lovely time out with boyfriend unaware of impending leak

The reason for these leaks, which seem to come at least twice a day, appears to be that the flange puckers every single time I try to sit down, crouch, cross my legs. You see my skin is now so raw – as my picky body has an allergic reaction to each and every ostomy product going – it looks like I have set fire to it and let it burn off (my stoma nurse says I look like a burn victim) and the bags are simply refusing to stick to the shiny surface. I’ve tried different makes of bags; bags infused with honey, seaweed; bags which are like sink plungers sucking on your skin; small bags; big bags, but nothing will stay on for more than a few hours, or will stay only if I use meters of tape in an attempt to secure the gaps, but either way the poo will gradually make its way through anything I try to put in its way. And if it’s not the bag it’s the wound dressing leaking, or the fistula bag exploding as it fills up with water in the shower.

To tell you the truth I’m sick of it all. My skin is so itchy from leaks and allergicreactions I must look like a withdrawing crack addict as I lie in bed holding my hands inches from my chest willing myself not to itch. I feel like taping oven mitts to my hands to stop myself having a cheeky scratch, as I know if I start I won’t stop until I’ve scratched away my whole stomach and look like something from Alien. In fact when the nurse was wrapping my wound up in swathes of bandages, leaving me looking like Michelin Man, she commented on the way my feet twitched uncontrollably as my body fought the overwhelming instinct to scratch scratch scratch.

So if any of you out there have any advice at all please please please comment below. I really need help before I give into the devil sitting on my shoulder who is constantly waving his pitch fork and whispering “come on…itch it…go on, you know you want to!” HELP!!!

ostomy leaks – The big stoma bucket list (2024)
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