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Helpful Advice

It is important to remember first & foremost with any health worry to get it checked out. If you have something abnormal, the best thing to do is to seek medical advice. You know your own body better than most. Some symptoms of Crohn’s Disease can also be symptoms of other things, from Ulcerative Colitis to intestinal blockages unrelated to chronic inflammation, so it is important to get the right medical diagnosis. Not everyone’s Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) diagnosis is straight forward or quick, so generally the earlier you get something looked into the better. The tests and examinations to determine what it is and how to treat it can vary from different doctors & specialists, but there are some...

Understandably, when people first discover Comfizz’ stoma supportwear, they often have questions they would like answering before they consider buying. They also often don’t know that you can get certain Comfizz garments on prescription. In today’s blog post, I am going to answer a number of those questions for you. Some questions are ones I also had myself when I first discovered Comfizz back in 2011 when I had my surgery for my permanent ileostomy, which was done via a large incision down my stomach. Will it stop my stoma working? No, it won’t. If you have issues with your stoma not working when wearing the garments, it may be that you have the wrong size. The only time I...

You may, or may have never, heard of this term. You may have also heard it being spoken about along with protruding or retracting stomas. A flush stoma is a stoma that sits level with the abdominal skin level. My experience with a flush stoma I have had issues with this, which was caused by a narrowing just before skin level, just inside my abdominal cavity a few centimeters behind my stoma. The narrowing was causing my stoma to be pulled back down to the skin level. A few things can cause a flush stoma such as surgical technique, a narrowing behind the stoma as I have just mentioned, weight gain/loss and it can also simply just occur over time...

Gas and ballooning can be a right pain in your out of order bum! But what things can help reduce it or make it more manageable? For me it is one of the biggest things I have to contend with in my day to day ostomy life but I don’t always help myself and I will explain why in a little bit.  Here is a short list of things that you can eat and drink that may produce more gas than others – now this is all relative and some foods don’t affect everyone in the same way it is just to maybe give you a light bulb moment. Heck there are still things that make me go DUH! Like...

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...