Skip to content

Frazer.it

Projects and Life…

Menu
  • Main Site
  • Blog Home
  • Guides
  • Life
  • Misc
  • Projects
  • Security
Menu

My 5 Tips – Living with a Stoma

Posted on February 23, 2018July 3, 2021 by Frazer

This will be a relatively short post, but I’ll do my best to give as much information for why I have chosen each tip, so here goes.

 

1. It does get better.

Trust me, you may feel absolutely terrible after you have your stoma initially, but it does get better over time. If you’ve read my first Post-op Blog Post, then you’ll know that I was struggling at the beginning and it was hard to come to terms with it. I even spent the afternoon in hospital looking for private medical services to come round daily and help me with changing and emptying.

It wasn’t a quick process though and took around a month to become confident. Just remember, it does get better!

 

2. Look after your skin.

I cannot stress this enough. You need to look after your skin. Especially around the stoma and, more importantly, where your bag will sit. Men, shaving the area does help!

If you don’t keep on top of your skin care, it can lead to infections. This is something I had to deal with, so I’m warning you ahead of time. Be sure to ask the stoma care team for different types of wipes/creams in order for you to work out which one is best to use.

 

3. Don’t follow all the rules!

While some rules will need to be followed for obvious reasons, don’t feel like you have to do it by the book. Every person living with a stoma is different, and just because someone has told you to do it one way, doesn’t mean you have to follow. Initially I thought I was doing everything wrong and I was constantly asking what the correct method was for certain things (especially emptying), but I came to realise that I can do it however I want. Whatever made me feel comfortable, made me happy. I didn’t care that it took me ten minutes to empty. I didn’t care that I used a jug of water to empty my stoma, rather than squeezing it out with my hands. Just remember, there is no wrong way of doing it.

 

4. Try not to get stressed.

Pardon the pun, but I cannot stress this enough. Suffering with stress doesn’t seem to help the situation. After my second operation, I found myself getting so stressed with working out the process, that I ended up making myself seriously ill. Stress plays a major factor while you have a stoma, so the best you can do to keep it under control, the better you will feel overall. Take your time with everything, don’t ever feel like you have to rush. Be as calm as you can.

The things I’ve found to help with this are to listen to music or walk somewhere. Even if it’s just a short walk around the street, it does help.

 

5. Eat plenty of Salt.

If you’ve not had your stoma long, you may not already know this – you need to add salt to your diet. You no longer have your large intestine to absorb the salts from your food, so in order to get the dose you need, you’ll need to up your intake. I first found this when I started to crave salt. Now I cannot live with out. I literally have it on everything… within reason.

You don’t have to follow all these tips – they’re just ones that I could think of at the time of writing this post. I’d love to hear your tips, so if you have any you would like to share, please tweet me @Frayzurr.

Thanks for reading! 🙂

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

  • Why I Invested in Cazoo
  • February in a Nutshell
  • sbAPIScan – What is it?
  • Brrrrr!
  • Task Failed Successfully

Categories

  • Guides
  • Life
  • Misc
  • Projects
  • Security

Recent Comments

  • Captain’s Log – Frazer.it on Scam Alert: Wetherspoon’s Fan Page
  • Sylvia on Scam Phishing Links in Your Google Calendar
  • Value My Website – Followup Post – Frazer.it on Value My Website – One Year On
  • Frazer on Post Op #3
  • Todd on Post Op #3

Archives

  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • July 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • May 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • April 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • May 2017

Tag Cloud

2020 2021 2022 blog code colitis coronavirus covid-19 covid19 email february getting started Google guide happy new year health holiday ileostomy j-pouch january jpouch life new year pancolitis phishing project projects scam scammer security site starting stoma student students surgery tech technology twitter uc ulcerative colitis useful value my website website word health organisation
© 2022 Frazer.it