Latest Forum Topics

hello all this is my first post thank you in advance for your replies and thanks to the Administrators who put this forum together. So I started off with perforated bowels during a surgery then had multiple surgeries. I developed a enterocutaneous fistula and after that a small bowel blockage. For awhile I had a wound fistula bag I wore then had the fistula and small bowel blockage taken down then went home with a Loop ileostomy bag for 4 months. I had a recessed stoma so had so many problems with leakage. Finally the loop ileostomy revers...

i think i have a blocked ostomy can anyone tell me what the symptoms are ?  ty  J

I have a colostomy and I'm Not sure if this is related to it, but my stomach is constantly gurgling and making very loud swishing noises. It's constantly moving. It's not just after I eat it's pretty much constant throughout the day and at night. It's almost too embarrassingly loud that I don't even wanna be around people. I didn't have this problem before but it seems to have gotten worse within the last year. Does anyone else have this problem or issue?

It doesn't matter what product I use. I still pancake.  I have tried hollister & sensual. I lubrecate my bag in the hopes stuff will do down. Nothing works. .

Hello, I'm soon to get an ileostomy but there's one thing putting me off massively! I've heard for a few women now that vaginal intercourse is either impossible, very sore or (for lack of a better way to say it) can't go very deep after the surgery. I've had appointments with my consultant and 2 stoma nurses who have never heard of this but they also gave me a leaflet that said exactly my points in it?! I feel like this a massive gamble to be taking, especially considering no one can give me an answer? I'd love some advice from women w...

“When did the future switch,” wrote Chuck Palahniuk in Invisible Monsters, “from being a promise to being a threat?” That’s exactly the state of affairs into which the USA has been led by the dishonest, corrupt, incompetent, Twitter-souled Donald Trump. We face today the certainty of chaos in November, attended by rightwing violence, and it appears there is nothing that anyone can do to forestall it. Deranged heads of state always end badly but, unfortunately, the nation falls to its knees with them. It disgus...

Hi, All!   I've seen a thread here re: lifespan changes for ostomates (None?  YAY!!!)  But, here's something I'm wondering about lately:   Science shows a direct link between the large intestine and the immune system.  For those of us who needed to have our colon removed, is our immune system compromised?  If so, in what way(s), how much?  Do we need to support our immune system any differently than someone who still has their colon?  Or...are these questions better suited to an immunologist or o...

Hi Guys   Thanks for all of the info you all give to others!   I had diverticulits which ruptured my colon back in April 2020.  I had a foot of my colon remove and had a colostomy for 3 months.  I had a reversal of my ostomy at the end of June 2020.  Since my second surgery I have had constant diarrhea (4-8x/day) with moderate to severe abdominal pain.  I was diagnosed with C. Diff while in the hospital for the reversal surgery.  I have been on antibiotics twice (Vanco for 10 days each time).  I ...

When the narrator of Saul Bellow’s The Bellarosa Collection is asked about a long past event that he doesn’t recall, he responds “Lady, this is one of a trillion incidents in a life like mine. Why should I recollect it?” But it gets simpler and closer to home than that. We bow to the recognition of the reality of memory loss begrudgingly. This summer I realized that I was too often having difficulty remembering whether or not I took my morning pill regimen. So I’ve had to start using one of those day-by-day pi...

Every fourth morning, I spread what I need upon the bathroom sink to change my appliance. It is routine, calcified over time into ritual. Each time I follow exact procedure, identical movements. It’s as if muscle memory takes over; conscious thought becomes secondary; I am an automaton. There was a time in my life when this sort of habitual activity was the exception, my work days busy with the variety that I was fortunate enough to have to confront day after day. Retirement has changed all that. I now face what Sylvia Plath called &...

can i have it at the same time

Morphology, the study of words and their formation, can be a fascinating pastime, but when one delves into the specialty area of medical words, it can get truly exciting. I began thinking about this when I realized that, although I always say that I had ileostomy surgery, what I actually had was a complete proctocolectomy (allegedly known in the surgeon’s break room as “the fully monty”). Now, that is one gawdawful sounding word. It looks bad, plus it sounds terrible, and it is both, in truth. Medical terms are creatures ...

Hi Gang,   Sorry for the disappearing act............it's not like my dog bit my stoma and ran with it............I'm just super busy and don't get online much lately.  Work is nuts, I've got a fox eating all my ducks and chickens that I can't catch, and it's Fall.......so time to get hay and get the farm ready for winter.  Plus daylight is getting scarce so I'm using every bit of out being outside.  So I didn't fall off a cliff or get hit by a bus..........we don't even have buses here, so no worries about that! ...

A short drive from my house is a nice walk leading to a lake. I park my car and cross a field before heading into the woods along a wide path leading to a point where the trail splits off in two directions. “When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” said the great philosopher Yogi Berra. The two choices are either clockwise, or counter-clockwise, around the lake. I go left and immediately there is a long, wooden pedestrian trestle that ascends and crosses over a railroad track and continues into a large grove of spreading ...

Hello. I'm brand new here and I was wondering if I could get some tips on using Nystop powder around my stoma. I'm super new to this and the nurse wasn't much help. So ok... I have to use the Nystop powder and even though I use the skin prep (it's by 3M) my barrier won't stay stuck and I keep getting leaks. Like so often that I gotta change it a couple times a day. I tryed putting it on in layers like powder then spray on the 3M stuff more powder and more spray. If I don't use the powder at all I get no leaks at all and I can wear a barri...

Hi all,  I don't always remember my dreams and sometimes wish I didn't remember the ones I do.  One thing I've noticed in the past eleven months since my first surgery is that any dream I did remember that I was a participant in, I did not have an ostomy.  I was my normal pre-ostomy self.  Last night for the first time I had a dream where I not only had an ostomy, but I was wearing something that showed my pouch, low rise pants, with the pouch hanging out and completely visible as the top I was wearing only came to my w...

Recently the skin right around the edge of my stoma has gotten very irritated-raw and bleeding. My barriers are not getting a good seal and I am at a loss about what to do. I've tried paste, and rings, both paste and rings, nothing but barrier, powder, no powder, hollister, ConvaTec, and coloplast, two piece and one piece.  I have tried different positions when putting on the barrier...lying flat, sitting up, standing up, slightly bent over. Nothing is keeping the output contained at the edge.  I don't know what else to do....it'...

To be without guts (present company accepted) doesn’t mean one lacks balls. I happen to have balls in spades: super jumbo cotton balls. They are a staple of my changing routine which I perform every fourth day, first thing in the morning, usually about 3:30 AM or so, as I am an early riser. The cotton balls have to be both SUPER JUMBO, which means they are larger than the run-of-the-mill, every day cotton ball, plus they absolutely must be ALL COTTON. The “cotton” balls that include some synthetic addition are not as abso...

We went for tests today. My wife has a little cold. Did the drive through. I was line B and wife was line A but they took us both at the same time, I did not want to line up again. They stuck a swab down my throat and I gagged a bit. Should get results in 2-4 days. I expect it will be negative. Wendy got her results by text, she is negative. I phoned my Doc's office today (Monday test was on Wednesday) and I am negative also.

I got an Email from Hollister Ostomy Awareness Day is October 3rd This year marks the 10th anniversary of Ostomy Awareness Day and we’re honored to stand with the entire ostomy community in celebration.

There were some odd jobs that I found myself suffering with while waiting to discover my true calling. Driving a taxi on the night shift in Miami didn’t last too long; nor did working as a houseparent at a facility for the developmentally disabled (still called “retarded” in those bygone days); the pizza chef gig was doomed from the start, notwithstanding that I got to eat whatever I had time to make for myself, since my supervisor was the owner’s fifteen year old son. I taught school for a while, wrote advertising ...

Hello! I'm a 36 y/o lady with IC. I've been planning on getting a Urostomy for almost a year now, but due to covid, things were put off for quite awhile. Just got the ball rolling again and may be getting my sugery in just a few months now. I'm curious if there's anyone else here who got a urostomy due to severe/end-stage interstitital cystitis. I had joined a specific group about this on FB but the group was too focused on religion for me and I was kicked for even asking about it :/   I've been pretty much 99% homebound si...

I love peanuts. But peanuts hate my stoma. Twice i have been into hospital to be unblocked. I know I'm stupid. But forbidden fruit, as they say. Are there any other ostimates that suffer from other food. I'm sure there are. 

The Dogs Meeting   The dogs once held a meeting,They came from near and far,Some came by motorcycle,And some by motor car.They walked into the meeting hall,Before around they looked,Each had to take his asshole off,And hang it on a hook.Now when the meeting startedWith each mother, son and sire,A dirty little yellow dogJumped up and hollered ‘FIRE’!The dogs jumped up in panicAnd had no time to look,So each one grabbed at randomAn asshole from a hook.They got their assholes all mixed up,Which made them very sore,To have t...

My first UC hospitalization was in upstate New York in a hospital that must have been a relic from the 19th Century, grim as it was. They installed me in what was called a semi-private room, a euphemism if ever there was one. A room is either private, or it’s not. A never-ending string of other patients funneled through the room during my one and one-half months there. I remember only one: a miserable older man who had just had his second leg amputated. Whatever pain meds they were dosing him with, it wasn’t enough. The poor ma...

The word OSTOMY has a derivation, just like other words. Many objects are named after the inventors: Louis Daguerre the daguerreotype, Rev. Sylvester Graham the graham cracker, the Earl of Sandwich for the common luncheon favorite, and Bill Gore for Gore-Tex, to give just a few examples. But I’m guessing that most of you were unaware that the ostomy was the invention of the once infamous French surgeon Dr. Emile Ostomé. Having emigrated from France to England after botching several abdominal operations in Paris, the good docto...

Ostomy people, as we are all painfully aware, must watch WHAT they eat, HOW they eat, HOW MUCH they eat, and WHEN they eat. Some foods may present digestive issues, others may produce the dreaded belly putters, while some induce what I discretely refer to as “the trots.” Importantly, I will rarely eat anything after dinner, and certainly not within an hour of bedtime. Yet, my own personal dilemma, I’m forced to admit, is that I have a terrible eating disorder. Normally, I would be reticent to openly discuss this malady, b...

From the fourth grade on, I worked. Job upon job, plus school which, as we know, if done right, is work too. I didn’t stop until I was seventy-five and, even then, it was with mixed emotions. Of course, as the great Lily Tomlin once said, the problem with the rat race is that, even if you win, you’re still a rat. So I came to regard retirement as time to hang it up, box it up, and give it up: hang up my suits, box up the accoutrements of my trade (don’t ask), and give up trying to impress anybody with my hard-earned profe...

Has anyone experienced awful constipation and stoma problem.  I've had colostomy 4 yrs.  Now I have a Hernia on left side quite swollen.  I'm on miralax 1 or 2 x a day.  But past Saturday I could tell less output...so I added more miralax,  prune juice,  very little food, it took until Sunday in the Middle of the night FINALLY get relief...but stoma was still swollen red. Skin pink/red around most of stoma. I didn't have problems like this until now and one other time 5 months ago.  I am having a colono...