Learn with Comfizz

Looking for ostomy education & related topics, helpful hints & real life experiences? Look no further! Browse our blog for support!

Running for Phoenix

Ever since I was a kid I enjoyed running mainly the sprints and as I got older and before I got far too sick with pouchitis I started to enjoy distance running. I have dabbled a few times with running since my ileostomy but I’m not sure my heart was in it and with having two small kids I’m not sure I had the get up and go either. Something however has changed my mind set and that something was pretty tragic. My best friend and her husband sadly lost their little boy Phoenix; her big love in life prior to her little family was running and I remember watching the London Marathon in 2016 whilst I was recovering from...

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Starting the year as I mean to go on!

Starting the year as I mean to go on but what exactly do I mean by that? Well it is obviously around my stoma but it is divided into three parts! They are: my ostomy supplies my diet my fitness They look like the beginnings of resolutions but I’m not thinking of them as such, so how do I plan on doing this? Firstly the stoma supplies – as we all know the NHS isn’t in exactly the best position to keep providing us with ostomy supplies on a free prescription we need to keep on top of what we have and how much we are ordering. Now this can be a bit of an awkward one as we try...

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Welcome to the Roaring Twenties!

Welcome welcome! Happy New Year from the whole Comfizz team! How crazy is it that we have entered into a new decade? I know to some that probably isn’t anything special but this is the first decade since the millennium that I have actually paid attention to that!  As I mentioned in my last post I spent the week between Christmas and New Years down with family in Cornwall and the holiday itself was lovely – we took our nephew along with our two to the castle’s at Falmouth (Pendennis) and St Mawes plus St Michael’s Mount. I’m a history buff and I don’t care! My stoma had however other ideas and from the drive down to the day we drove back...

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Staycation over the holiday season

Myself and the Comfizz team hope you had a lovely Christmas Day and Boxing Day!! I am currently in Cornwall for a few days in between Christmas and New Years Eve, this is our second time doing this since having my ostomy and this time we at least don’t have a 6 month baby to think about. It is Button’s second time in a hotel the first being when we stayed in the Lake District for Ra-Ra’s staycation birthday weekend. Last time we stayed in Cornwall we were able to stay at 00Steve’s Dad’s but they had visitors so we are 3 miles down the road. Even though I am no stranger to the whole staycation thing and have gone...

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How I cope during the festive season with an ostomy

So this is going to be my fourth Christmas with an ostomy and every year I find something different to make the festive period a bit easier for me, especially as I work, have kids and I do all the cooking! I like my ostomy to work with me not against me!   Obviously the first thing I like to do is have all of my supplies ordered and then I start filtering out my supplies to the tower of drawers I have in my bathroom, refilling my emergency kits that I keep in my handbags and then I pop the extras in clear boxes on top of my wardrobe. I also being the one that cooks the food in...

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Dansac

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...

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Crohns and Colitis Awareness Week 2019

So this week has been Crohns and Colitis awareness week (inflammatory bowel disease aka IBD) and our diseases can vary wildly from person to person but some things affect us all. This week over on Instagram I did a post a week with a little snapshot how having ulcerative colitis affected me which I will share in this post. December 1st – Today marks the start of Crohns and Colitis awareness week! I had to have a rough guess at my medication tally but its definitely around 8! I was diagnosed 2 years after symptoms started. There is the possibility of more surgery but I’m still not sure how I feel about that yet. December 2nd – I don’t have many photos left...

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Preparing to order your Christmas Delivery

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...

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Mini MH series – post 1: What is mental health & what does it mean to different people?

Hi Comfizz readers! Over the next few weeks, I will be writing about several elements surrounding the invisible disability of mental health. In these posts, I will be discussing various mental health matters & sharing my own mental health experiences, as well as including some useful mental health contacts & some tips I find help me. This week is the NHS’ #SelfCareWeek which ties in nicely with me starting this mini blog series. I will be including a self-care post closer to Christmas which I am super looking forward to writing. Mental health is something I have a lot of experience with & is also something I am very passionate about. So, what is mental health? Having a look around...

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Partial Blockages

Firstly I would like to apologise to all my lovely readers for being a day late but the sickness bug had hit the Simpson household! Firstly with Ra-Ra being sick, then my bag kept filling up – I managed to be safe from vomiting as I took some anti sickness after laying on the kitchen floor dry heaving at 5:30 in the morning. 00Steve then was sick and got migraines and the only person who seemed free of the bug was Button although he was sick a few days before. I have done a post before on what it is like being “normal” person sick when chronically sick. But now onto the partial blockages as I suffered that the night leading...

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