Living with a stoma is not easy. Let’s face it, if you have had an ostomy before then you know exactly what I mean. My heart goes out to all the people like me that are having to live with such a serious affliction the rest of their lives. I mean, can you imagine wearing an ostomy pouch on your lower abdomen for the rest of your life? What a sad reality that is for a lot of people around the world. Well, I am writing this article because I am hoping I can contribute to the cause and show some support to all my other fellow ostomates. If you have been living with a stoma for a long time, or if you have recently just got a stoma put in and are trying to adjust to your new life, this article will be for you. Hopefully you can learn something new about living with your stoma and that this article can slightly improve your quality of life. I know that a lot of these tips have helped me find some easier ways to exist with my ostomy, and I am hoping they do the same for you. So without further ado, here are some quick tips and tricks for living with an ostomy.
So the first tip I have to talk about is removing the hair around your stoma. A lot of people have short, fine hair on their abdomen. Granted, this amount of hair can differ greatly depending on the person and the gender, but I think it is true that most people have at least some hair on their stomachs.
If you do have hair on your stomach, you may find that your hair can sometimes impede on your ability to properly secure your skin barrier around your stoma. In addition to this, you may be finding some discomfort in removing the skin barrier when you are in need of a change because it is pulling some of the hairs with it. Well my friend, I have a solution for you. Shaving the hair in the areas around your stoma will greatly improve not only the seal of your skin barrier, but also the overall comfort of changing it out. My suggestion to you is that you shave the hair carefully with an electric razor, and carefully avoid using an open blade or waxing because these things could damage your stoma or something like that.
Another tip I have to tell you about is the benefits of picking the time to change out your ostomy pouch. My best advice here is that you change your ostomy pouch on an empty stomach when at all possible. I have found that early in the morning (basically right when I wake up) works well for me, because then I can get rid of all the output from the course of the night and I also don’t have much output coming out when I am trying to change my pouch. Believe me, there is nothing worse than trying to change your ostomy pouch while you have a whole steak dinner’s worth of output flying out of your stoma. I hope this article was helpful for you and that you can leave here with a few pieces of advice that you didn’t have before.
Excretory Tract Info 