The Changeover

I remember after I first had the surgery, the ET nurse explained to me how I should use two pouches for every flange, rinsing one out and switching back and forth between them. And she taught me to use a little milk of magnesia to make the red areas tacky before putting powder on them. I started calling the changing of the flange and pouch The Changeover so my wife would know in a word what I was doing. At first, the seasons seemed to change while I was in the bathroom doing it. I gradually got faster and faster at it and discarded the nurse's recommended techniques until several years ago when it got so that I am in and out of the bathroom so quickly my wife rarely knows I have completed The Changeover.

My daughter also has FAP and two years ago was the less than grateful recipient of an ileostomy. She is deaf and has other disabilities, so we wondered if she would be able to take care of an ostomy, but an internal pouch was not recommended as our daughter is not able to express very well when something is wrong, i.e., pain or discomfort, and the things that can go wrong with an internal pouch cannot be seen - they must be reported by the patient. Overall, she has managed better than we expected, though she has problems with it in cycles, such as a rather nightmarish trip we took to Florida with her. Next time we take her, we fly! I have never watched her do a Changeover because whenever she does it here, I am doing it for her. (She lives in a group home.) The good news is she has lost a lot of weight over the last two years, and I think that makes it easier for her in some ways. I say that, but I have also lost weight, and I can't say it has helped in that area, though it is obviously more healthy overall. Plus, I haven't lost as much as she has. But I am pretty close to the weight I was when I had the surgery 20+ years ago, so that can't be a bad thing!

I haven't tried many variations over the years in flanges and pouches. Almost entirely Convatec, though I used Hollister when I was able to buy it cheaply online, and I briefly tried that brand with the word miracle in the name, or something like that. I received a free sample, and it was almost like not wearing anything; it was so light and unobtrusive. But that made me nervous, and I'd keep checking it was there - not a great thing to touch yourself in public! I sometimes use Convatec's Autolock, which is kind of cool. It seems like such a hard material I worried once about it setting off an airport scanner - as if. I haven't used the moldable even though I have a couple of samples. One of these days. I briefly tried one-piece - again, samples. It didn't seem to stay on very well for me. Mostly, I have stuck with good old Convatec two-piece with clip (took a while to get used to the new rubber clip - stuck in my ways - no, not me, ma'am). My daughter uses pre-cut Convatec (we wanted to keep it as simple as possible for her) with the Invisiclose instead of a clip. There are so many brands and types out there that it seems like you could hold a day-long conference just on all of them. (But who'd attend?)

But after all these years, I am much faster, as I said. In fact, I think of it now as the changeover, without the fanfare, brass band, or the capital "C."