Comfizz Blog
Helpful Advice

For those of you who are still working and have the ability to work from home during the Covid-19 pandemic, suddenly being at home all the time can be a big change to adapt to. You more than likely will experience a whole array of emotions during the working from home process, speaking from my own experience! Self-isolation – a not-so-new concept Having had signs of Inflammatory Bowel Disease for as much of my life as I can remember, followed by my diagnosis at the age of 7, staying at home is no stranger. Up until around the age of 20, I spent most of my time at home. When I wasn’t at home, I felt edgy, anxious, apprehensive and a lot...

Understandably, what is going on in the world right now with Covid-19 can be very daunting & scary at times for a number of reasons. We have all had to make changes, some of them quite dramatic, in a very short space of time. Some of us may have sadly experienced the virus closer to home or have tragically lost someone as a result of Covid-19. There is so much uncertainty around what may happen or how long adapted life like this will pan out, but I wanted to take this opportunity to hopefully provide a little bit of reassurance on living with a stoma at this time, & hopefully answer a few questions you may understandably have. If I...

I have at times struggled with my peristomal skin like I mentioned in a post last week when I wrote about self care for your ostomy I just wanted to talk about the different issues I have come across when it comes to the skin around your stoma, I haven’t experienced all of these but there are some accounts across social media where people who live with conditions talk about it in depth and openly. I guess that is the beauty of social media you can search tags and find almost anything!   When I say peristomal skin I personally mean the skin underneath the base plate; I’m not sure if that’s how the experts word it but it’s around the stoma...

What is stoma pancaking? We know it’s not going to be as pleasant as pancakes of the edible kind when we discuss pancaking in terms of stoma problems! Stoma pancaking can occur when there is little to no air inside of the stoma bag. This can lead to a vacuum forming, which then means output from the stoma stays stuck on  the stoma, or around the top of the stoma bag and on the bag filters. The output then cannot flow down into the stoma bag, unfortunately leading to the stoma bag coming away from the stoma in some cases, if not spotted early. This can then lead to sore skin, which can contribute to more leakages. Stoma pancaking can...

Not everyone thinks about how to self care when it comes to your ostomy and until my depression hit really badly neither did I! Yet when you think about it, it is actually quite important to think about caring for your ostomy and yourself as even though it is part and parcel the two have slightly different requirements. As we all know our ostomy can be either a very steady and reliable little red blob OR it can literally be doing try outs for Dennis the Menace. We do have to roll with the punches sometimes and that is when our ostomy self care comes into play! Most of us have a fairly standard routine that we don’t often deviate from...

Have you ever experienced phantom rectum pain? If you haven’t or not sure what it is exactly this is how I describe it: the feeling of needing to poo or pass wind from your bum but it either has been sewn up or made defunct by a temporary stoma. A lot of ostomates have experienced this and it isn’t a particularly pleasant experience and when you think about it, it is hardly surprising as you often hear about people suffering phantom limb issues from an amputated limb.  It is very common in women around their periods and can cause more discomfort than usual and can cause twitching or cramps in the rectal area. That is certainly not to say other...

Something I get asked a lot about is drinking alcohol with my ostomy; which makes me laugh because I don’t drink that often anymore but when I’m in the mood for it I sure do enjoy a drink. Last night was my birthday and I had a night out scheduled so I thought it was the perfect time to talk about having a boozey night when having an ostomy.  I have a few things that I like to do when it comes to preparing myself for a night out so that I don’t feel worse for wear in the morning, it isn’t a perfect prevention for hangovers but it definitely helps! drink a dioralyte or an electrolyte solution before you go out...

This month I decided the next company we could highlight is Dansac which is actually the first ostomy bag make that I ever tried as it has some kind of sponsorship with my hospital. Now for me that actually wasn’t an issue because the Novalife bags supplied by Dansac were really good bags and I used them right up until I found the Peak Medical bags I now use.  Dansac is quite a big company who have a range of products that are generally a good product for new ostomates as they don’t have many extra ingredients like vitamin E or aloe vera (all of which I react too) I think because of the size of the Novalife I got used...

Is this your first Christmas with an ostomy of any kind? Maybe you are a dab hand at this now or maybe you panic about running out of supplies over the festive period? Hopefully with this little guide on what I do when it comes to preparing to order my ostomy supplies delivery it might be a little less stressful! First of all please check out this post of when the last guaranteed delivery for Christmas is for the main companies here. Even though they are all open until around Christmas Eve some of them like to have a cut off date just to ensure you get those much needed supplies in time! So what else do I do before getting ready...

Having stoma surgery is definitely a big deal, whether for a temporary stoma or a permanent one. There is a lot of information out there that we all get bombarded with pre-surgery especially, leaving a lot of us feeling very overwhelmed and wondering where to start first when it comes to learning all about the stoma world! However, some people feel before surgery especially that they were not provided with enough support/information to prepare them for life with a stoma. Some people also have their surgery as an emergency, so may not have ever heard of a stoma before or actually had that time to prepare! It’s safe to say that you can read up all you like about having...