No sign of metastatic cancer! Now I'm hoping to hear from the surgeon about reversing my colostomy, but I guess it depends on how she reads the MRI and my scar tissue situation. But what a great birthday present! I do have to get back to my walking, though, so I'm in better shape. The other thing the PET scan showed was that when I fell a few weeks ago, I actually fractured my rib—no wonder ...

Hello everyone, the products I find most helpful for my ileostomy are
Hollister flange without the tape to peel off. I also use a skin barrier called Tens Aces. I buy that on Amazon. It is a little pricey but so well worth it. Around $30. Not a covered skin barrier by Medicare but the best product for your skin. I also use a Hollister ring and slim size because my stoma is small and on the bag ...

MY OSTOMY IS MY NORMAL. It follows, then, that my ostomy is normal. My dictionary says that normal is the usual, typical, expected. Precisely. It’s all I know. It’s there when I get up in the morning, it calls to me after every meal, and it lies down with me every night. The best day of my life was when, years and years ago, in some long-forgotten moment of my past, I came to regard ...

Tomorrow at 8 a.m., I am having the ileostomy reversed. I had to come in and say thank you to everyone who has helped here along the way. I had some pretty low points on this journey, and this community was so supportive and helpful. I appreciate everyone who has chimed in with advice and words of encouragement.

About 3 months after my ileostomy and ureter repair surgery, I had to start working again and could not do anything strenuous. So, I took on a job working the midnight shift in retail (no customers), bathroom accessible any time I needed, light duty work (mostly). With that said, I'd been there over a year and took on a high volume, high stress position, thinking about higher pay and such. We ...

I had my colectomy and surprise colostomy on may 6th of this year. It went necrotic and receded dangerously deep ! I had a revision on june 6th. It is now healthy and bright pink/red!! My issue is, Fred (yes I named it lol) is an inny. A deep inny. I use deep convex flanges but the poo still finds it's way underneath and causes skin breakdown. It has delayed my chemo and I've tried several way ...

Hi everyone! I first posted here back in March of 2024, and it's been a wild ride.
Last November, I had a completely clear PET scan and was able to reverse my ileostomy surgery. I had no idea how difficult it was going to be to wake my colon back up and have all the organs down there play nice with each other. I was in the hospital for almost 3 weeks just waiting to poop. It finally happened, ...

Howdy bagamigas and amigos, I haven't been here in a year or three, reintroducing myself.
I'm a middle-aged lady with a colostomy. My chocolate-smeared rosebud (the stoma, the ostomy) has been with me since 1997.
Fave products:
Convatec moldable Natura 45mm wafer - NOT the kind with the weird see-through accordion plastic on the ring (to make it easier to snap shut; those are stink factories; ...

The Big Scare
At church today, Mrs. B suffered a terrible calamity. One that rendered her temporarily speechless. A church friend behind me reached over to wish me a happy Easter and shake my hand. I leaned over to bid him holiday wishes too. Mrs. B nudged my leg. She was pointing toward my pants zipper. Hmmmm. Did I forget to pull it up? Nooo.
Then she hissed, "Your thingy is showing." "Thin ...

IF YOU ARE AN EARLY RISER, like me, you are keeping company with other well-known morning persons like Ben Franklin and Henry David Thoreau. “Cultivate the habit of early rising,” suggested Thoreau. “It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.” This is especially true for people with an ostomy, since we have a natural need to allow gravity to work its magic on our C ...

Since I can't get into the local nurse until Aug 1st, I went with a video call with an ostomy nurse from Convatec, and I cannot recommend it highly enough! She was great, saw what I was dealing with, and flat out said, “That isn't a stoma, that's basically a fistula” and had some ideas of how I can deal with it. She helped me measure the stoma so that I cut the hole the right size (I was c ...